ABSTRACTA high-density non-equilibrium atmospheric pressure plasma (NEAPP) applied for inactivating fungal spores of P. digitatum is introduced as an environmentally safe and rapid-inactivation method. The contributions of ozone, ultra violet (UV) radiation and ground-state atomic oxygen in the NEAPP on the inactivation of the spores are evaluated using colony count method.The absolute densities of ozone were measured by using ultraviolet absorption spectroscopy. The ozone density increased from 2 to 8 ppm with an increase in the distance from the plasma source, while the inactivation rate decreased. The inactivation rate of plasma was evaluated to be thousand times higher than that of an ozone generator using the integrated number density of ozone. In addition, it was clarified that the contribution of UV radiation to inactivation was not dominant for P. digitatum inactivation by NEAPP by filtering the active species using quartz plate. From these results, we can speculate that the inactivation efficiency of reactive oxygen species (ROS) will be larger than those of others.In order to investigate the effect of ground-state atomic oxygen as one of ROS, the inactivation of P. digitatum spores using an oxygen radical source that employs a high-density atmospheric-pressure O2/Ar plasma. The absolute O density was measured to be 1.4×1014 and 1.5×1015 cm–3 using vacuum ultra violet absorption spectroscopy (VUVAS) using a microdischarge hollow cathode lamp. The behaviors of the O densities as a function of O2/(Ar+O2) mixture flow rate ratio correspond to that of the inactivation rate. This result indicates that ground-state atomic oxygen is concluded to be the dominant species that causes inactivation.
Electron impact excitation of the ground-state 3P fine-structure levels in atomic oxygen