Two kinds of floating electrode, floating dielectric barrier covered electrode (FDBCE) and floating pin electrode (FPE), which can enhance the performance of plasma jet are reported. The intense discharge between the floating electrode and power electrode decreased the voltage to trigger the plasma jet substantially. The transition of plasma bullet from ring shape to disk shape in the high helium concentration region happened when the floating electrode was totally inside the powered ring electrode. The enhanced electric field between propagating plasma bullet and ground electrode is the reason for this transition. The double plasma bullets happened when part of the FDBCE was outside the powered ring electrode, which is attributed to the structure and surface charge of FDBCE. As part of the FPE was outside the powered ring electrode, the return stroke resulted in a single intensified plasma channel between FPE and ground electrode.

Chronic wounds are a major burden for worldwide health care systems, and patients suffer pain and discomfort from this type of wound. Recently gas plasmas have been shown to safely speed chronic wounds healing. In this paper, we develop a deterministic mathematical model formulated by eight-species reaction-diffusion equations, and use it to analyze the plasma treatment process. The model follows spatial and temporal concentration within the wound of oxygen, chemoattractants, capillary sprouts, blood vessels, fibroblasts, extracellular matrix material, nitric oxide (NO), and inflammatory cell. Two effects of plasma, increasing NO concentration and reducing bacteria load, are considered in this model. The plasma treatment decreases the complete healing time from 25 days (normal wound healing) to 17 days, and the contributions of increasing NO concentration and reducing bacteria load are about 1/4 and 3/4, respectively. Increasing plasma treatment frequency from twice to three times per day accelerates healing process. Finally, the response of chronic wounds of different etiologies to treatment with gas plasmas is analyzed. V C 2013 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.