Characteristics and performance of an integrated coplanar dielectric barrier discharge device for hand hygiene

Abstract

A touchable plasma device based on coplanar dielectric barrier discharge (CDBD) is designed for hand hygiene. The biological safety is evaluated from the aspects of electrical and thermal properties. The peak value of current through the human body (~3.5 mA) and the highest device surface temperature (~40°C) are lower than the threshold of perception current and thermal damage temperature, respectively. The typical bacteria that are present on our hands in daily life Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus are selected to verify the sterilization performance of the device. The results of human contact safety evaluation and sterilization test have demonstrated that this proposed CDBD device is reliable and user‐friendly for applications in hand hygiene.