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Atmospheric pressure plasmas gain increasing interest in numerous areas e.g. medicine, pharmacy, biology, packaging industry and food industry. In these areas a strong demand for disinfection methods that circumvent disadvantages of common sterilization techniques (ethylene oxide, gamma rays or heat) which are toxic or cause material degradation can be recognised. Thus, scientific and technological activities have focussed on methods based on non-thermal plasmas. Besides small temperature loads to the surface, they produce decent doses of UV radiation and radicals. Moreover, plasmas are able to penetrate into small trenches making them favourable for the treatment of 3D objects. Two different plasma sources were applied for this purpose: propagating microwave plasma and rf capillary jet. It is known that plasma generation and treatment methods have to be tailored for the particular application due to the complex character of the interaction between plasma and biological system. It will be demonstrated that the ability to control both, VUV/UV emission and concentration of reactive molecules in the volume over a wide range allows to reduce the number of germs by 3 to 6 decades for real objects, e.g. bottles and medical devices. Prototypal installations applicable in pharmaceutical industry and medicine are presented. The additional applicability for surface coating will be demonstrated using the capillary jet. |