Plasmas, which consist of charged particles and are the 4th state of matter, are used in high-tech industrial systems such as in lithography machines to make microchips or in ultrafine particle (UFP) sensors to measure the concentration of tiny particles (smaller than 0.1 micrometers) that could be damaging to human health.

“Due to their small size, UFPs can deposit deep in the lungs and then enter the blood stream, causing irreversible tissue damage and disease,” says Tim Staps, PhD researcher in the Complex Ionized Media group at the department of Applied Physics.

Sensors for society?

While industrial UFP sensors have been around for some time, there are several issues that must be overcome before they are commonplace in society. Their availability would be well-timed too as the Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu (RIVM) estimates that the number of deaths in the Netherlands due to the inhalation of particulate matter (including ultrafine particles) emitted by cars and other processes is between 7,000 and 12,000 per year.

The first issue is cost as laboratory-scale devices are priced at 10,000 euros, far too expensive for cars, while the widescale use of the technology is limited by a lack of legislation for ultrafine particles. But many technical issues are also hindering their wide-scale use.

“Besides making compact UFP sensors, they also shouldn’t require continual maintenance. For example, industrial sensors need to be checked every 100 hours, which isn’t feasible for cars,” says Staps. “The sensors also need to be sensitive as UFP concentrations in air can be low and hard to measure.”

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Originally Appeared Here