3. Portable plasmas for a better world – 4CBLW00-03

Atmospheric pressure plasmas can be used in various fields such as air-depollution, medicine, material science, sensing and agriculture. It is especially the miniaturization of electrical power supplies, plasma sources and/or plasma reactor geometries over the last years, that enabled the possibility to develop portable plasma devices for use in each of these fields. In this challenge students will define and investigate a new potential portable plasma application and define how the technology should be utilized and further developed taking into account electrical, plasma physics and plasma chemical aspects.  In the first part of the challenge, students will discover the current possibilities and limitations and choose a specific (potential) application to focus on. With this application in mind, students will define a research question or design idea and investigate the potential impact on the world around them. In the following weeks they answer their research question and/or conceptualize their design idea. Finally, a roadmap discussing further implementation beyond their own work to make their idea a success will be developed. For this inquiry students may create their own (virtual) portable plasma device for which equipment and plasma modelling software are available.