This book is intended to present the application of plasma phenomena to wide variety of fields. Therefore, even if the readers do not know the plasma phenomena at present, you could understand what the plasma is and what kind of typical characteristics it has. This book is useful for the people who are studying or working in the fields of chemical engineering, electronic engineering, energy and environmental engineering or medical surgery and treatment fields, as well as in the plasma major. However, the readers are required to have leaned fundamental electromagnetism for full understanding the contents of this book. After understanding or knowing the plasma characteristics, you could improve or develop new application fields based on the plasma.
In Chapter 1, and through Chap. 4, what is the plasma is introduced by explaining terrestrial, space and astrophysical phenomena as well as artificially produced ones. These phenomena are easy to see or be made in daily life. In other words, plasmas are quite popular phenomena. The key techniques for keeping plasma in clean vessel are discussed by explaining the vacuum system. The standard diagnostic methods for obtaining plasma characteristics are also explained.
From Chapter 5, and through Chap. 7, main parts of this book are described, including the application of plasma phenomena to the material processing, energy and environmental fields, medical fields, and the combined area of these fields. The controlled thermonuclear fusion is strongly anticipated phenomena for the future energy source. The nuclear fusion, however, has vast variety of engineering tasks and fields, but this book cannot cover entire subject with respect to nuclear fusion physics and engineering. Another advanced energy source is the high energy particle beam source. With help of plasma, this system is expected to become quite small, typically 1/1000, compared with the present high energy particle accelerators. Wide variety of applications to the environmental fields such as exhaust gases treatments are also introduced.
On the other hand, fresh plants require a lot of carbon dioxide, CO2, as well as sun light. As a new technique for recycling of CO2, this gas is introduced into the greenhouse for cultivation of plants. Sterilization with use of plasma is one of other key techniques, by producing ozone in the oxygen. However, ozone is very toxic and it is not good in surrounding of human, and other nontoxic method is introduced.
The applications of plasma to the medical fields have wide variety of fields, such as surgery, surface coating of the materials used within human body and many others. In the plasma surgery, for example, damages on the surround cells of the body are quite limited compared with use of metal surgery knives. The plasma medicine is an innovative and effective for therapeutic and surgery applications in the future.