This white paper considers the future of plasma science and technology related to the manufacturing and modifications of plastics and textiles, summarizing existing efforts and the current state‐of‐art for major topics related to plasma processing techniques. It draws on the frontier of plasma technologies in order to see beyond and identify the grand challenges which we face in the following 5–10 years. To progress and move the frontier forward, the paper highlights the major enabling technologies and topics related to the design of surfaces, coatings and materials with non‐equilibrium plasmas. The aim is to progress the field of plastics and textile production using advanced plasma processing as the key enabling technology which is environmentally friendly, cost‐efficient, and offers high‐speed processing.

In this paper we examined the photocatalytic efficiency of a laser-synthesized colloidal solution of ZnO nanoparticles synthesized by laser ablation in water. The average size of the obtained colloidal ZnO nanoparticles is about 47 nm. As revealed by electron microscopy, other nanostructures were also present in the colloidal solution, especially nanosheets. A photocatalytic degradation of UV-irradiated Methylene Blue and Rhodamine B solutions of different concentration in the presence of different ZnO catalyst mass concentrations was studied in order to examine their influence on photodegradation rates. ZnO nanoparticles have shown high photocatalytic efficiency, which is limited due to different effects related to UV light transmittivity through the colloidal solution. Therefore, increasing catalyst concentration is effective way to increase photocatalytic efficiency up to some value where photodegradation rate saturation occurs. The photodegradation rate increases as the dye concentration decreases. These findings are important for water purification applications of laser-synthesized ZnO nanoparticles.

It is demonstrated that Cu ions can be used to control the ageing of plasma-activated liquids through the Fenton-type reaction, which acts as a competitor to the N O 2 − + H₂O₂ + H⁺ → products reaction, and thus moderates the recombination of N O 2 − ions. It is shown that the ageing dynamics is influenced by the type of Cu-ions source used, due to the different ion dissolution dynamics. Using CuNP-colloidal and copper acetate salt solutions, respectively, similar ageing dynamics can be achieved: the lifetime of N O 2 − can be increased to 10⁴ min comparing to 10² min obtained in plasma-activated water, while the H₂O₂ concentration decreases to about half of its initial value. While the treated salt solutions contain the degradation products of the salt compounds, the CuNPs can be filtered out from the plasma-activated colloid (PAC). It is shown that filtration does not influence the concentration of active species, while the ageing of the filtrated PAC depends on the moment of filtration, which determines the concentration of dissolved Cu ions. Using copper foil, the dissolved Cu-ion concentration can be controlled by removing the foil during ageing, and in this way the lifetime of species and the H₂O₂ concentration can be adjusted. The effect has been validated in the case of two different plasma sources: a surface-wave microwave discharge and a kHz plasma jet, which produce PALs with different [ N O 2 − ] / [ H 2 O 2 ] concentration ratio, which is the main governor of the ageing process.

One of the driving forces behind the development of cold plasma sources at atmospheric pressure is their application in the biomedical field. In this respect, radio-frequency (RF) plasma jets are of particular importance due to their possible safe operation on humans and the generation of the high amount of reactive species. For this reason, we designed an RF plasma jet in co-axial geometry with the possibility of aerosol introduction, where its characteristics were evaluated by electrical diagnostics, optical emission and laser scattering spectroscopy. The RF plasma jet operation and stability of diffuse mode were analysed based on energy balance. It was observed that α -mode diffuse discharge characterised by an effluent length up to 5 mm was sustained at a power density below 30 W cm ⁻³ . The gas and rotational temperature were determined by means of spectroscopy methods and compared with the results of direct laser scattering. It was established that the gas temperature obtained from N ₂ emission of transition C ³ П _u → B ³ П _g (0, 2) is highly overestimated whereas the gas temperature estimated from OH transition A ² Σ+ → X ² П _i (0, 0) gave a reasonable agreement with both Rayleigh and Raman spectroscopy. Based on the Rayleigh scattering method, uniform gas temperature distribution in the discharge effluent was found at a power below 15 W with the average temperature below 340 ± 15 K. The low gas temperature of argon plasma jets would allow use of this source in temperature-sensitive material applications including skin treatments.