Plasma jet technology and encouraging Pacific students in science

Claire Concannon catches up with Dr. Taniela Lolohea of Auckland University of Technology. He is researching in the relatively new field of low temperature plasma surface coatings, and explains how it can be used to create customised surfaces for many purposes. But he is also investigating ways to encourage more Pacific students in science, including by developing projects that might be more attractive for them.

Solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.

The fourth state of matter, plasma, makes up 99.9% of the known visible universe. Stars, lightning, our upper atmosphere: all made of plasma. And increasingly, scientists are figuring out how to harness the power of plasma for many different applications.

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Plasma is ionised gas - that is, gas that contains charged particles. It is the often-unseen factor in many manufacturing and processing steps of the goods that we buy and use, like our TVs, cellphones and computers. About one third of the steps involved in making microchips, for example, are plasma based.

Plasma etching, plasma welding, plasma bonding and cross-linking, using plasma to clean surfaces, or make them sticky, or sterilise them. The list of all the things we use plasma for goes on and on.

At the Auckland University of Technology, chemistry lecturer Dr Taniela Lolohea is focused on how plasma jet technology can be used to add thin, high quality, specific purpose coatings.

'Traditional' plasma technology involves heating a gas up to 100s or 1000s of degrees Celsius to create and maintain the plasma while it is being used for the coating, etching, bonding or other process. As a result, there are limitations in its use for adding surface coatings - for example, using something that been heated to a thousand degrees on plastic or certain textiles is just not going to work. Lolohea's research harnesses a recent development in this area which means that plasma can now be created and used at the relatively low temperatures of 25-60℃.

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This opens a world of opportunity that Lolohea is keen to explore. Working with collaborators he is problem-solving different surface coating needs - whether that is a coating that is thick, thin, porous, dense, antimicrobial, or needs to contain intact biological structures like proteins. …

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details