Synthesis of Coatings, Nanoparticles, and Small Building Blocks by Cold Atmospheric Plasma. A New (Exciting) Green Chemistry, with Great Challenges

Cold atmospheric plasmas are non thermal plasmas where highly reactive energetic species, generated mostly by electron impact and collisions with metastables, can exist at room temperature. These species can be used to treat surfaces, to deposit coatings, to decompose toxic substances, or to proceed to new gas phase chemistry.
In the first part the fundamentals of cold atmospheric plasma will be briefly presented, focusing on the constraints, and their specificity.
In the second part, some applications of atmospheric plasma will be used to underline the various possibilities of such plasmas:
- Synthesis of organic coatings: effect of the precursor chemistry and plasma power on the resulting coating,
- Study of the reaction mechanism for the synthesis of coatings through a combined study of the plasma phase by mass spectrometry and the coating chemistry by XPS,
- Effect of the precursor injection mode on the biocompatible properties of plasma-PEG coatings,
- Texturization of PTFE to reach superhydrophobic surfaces by a selected use of the chemistry of an atmospheric plasma post-discharge,
- Effect of the plasma gas on the chemistry of fluorinated coatings,
- Atmospheric plasma conversion of CO2/CH4 mixtures.