The inconsistent vitality and efficiency of plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB) are technical limitations in the application of PGPB as biofertilizer. To improve these disadvantages, we examined the potential of micro Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) plasma to enhance the vitality and functional activity of a PGPB, Bacillus subtilis CB-R05. Bacterial multiplication and motility were increased after plasma treatment, and the level of a protein involved in cell division was elevated in plasma treated bacteria. Rice seeds inoculated with plasma treated bacteria showed no significant change in germination, but growth and grain yield of rice plants were significantly enhanced. Rice seedlings infected with plasma treated bacteria showed elevated tolerance to fungal infection. SEM analysis demonstrated that plasma treated bacteria colonized more densely in the broader area of rice plant roots than untreated bacteria. The level of IAA (Indole-3-Acetic Acid) and SA (Salicylic Acid) hormone was higher in rice plants infected with plasma treated than with untreated bacteria. Our results suggest that plasma can accelerate bacterial growth and motility, possibly by increasing the related gene expression, and the increased bacterial vitality improves colonization within plant roots and elevates the level of phytohormones, leading to the enhancement of plant growth, yield, and tolerance to disease.

The superiority of gallium nitride FET (GaN FET) over silicon MOSFET is examined in this paper. One of the outstanding features of GaN FET is low reverse-recovery charge, which enables continuous conduction mode operation of totem-pole bridgeless boost power factor correction (PFC) circuit. Among many bridgeless topologies, totem-pole bridgeless shows high efficiency and low conducted electromagnetic interference performance, with low cost and simple control scheme. The operation principle, control scheme, and circuit implementation of the proposed topology are provided. The converter is driven in two-module interleaved topology to operate at a power level of 5.5 kW, whereas phase-shedding control is adopted for light load efficiency improvement. Negative bias circuit is used in gate drivers to avoid the shoot-through induced by high speed switching. The superiority of GaN FET is verified by constructing a 5.5 kW prototype of two-module interleaved totem-pole bridgeless boost PFC converter. The experiment results show the highest efficiency of 98.7% at 1.6 kW load and an efficiency of 97.7% at the rated load.

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