{"id":243752,"date":"2026-09-08T01:33:07","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T06:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/dark-plasma-regions-reveal-overlooked-source-of-reactive-atomic-oxygen"},"modified":"2026-09-08T01:33:07","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T06:33:07","slug":"dark-plasma-regions-reveal-overlooked-source-of-reactive-atomic-oxygen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/dark-plasma-regions-reveal-overlooked-source-of-reactive-atomic-oxygen","title":{"rendered":"Dark plasma regions reveal overlooked source of reactive atomic oxygen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/dark-plasma-regions-reveal-overlooked-source-of-reactive-atomic-oxygen2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have found a way to make plasma more effective for its wide-ranging uses, from antimicrobial applications to surface conditioning in the semiconductor industry. They mapped the production of atomic oxygen, a key ingredient of oxygen plasma, while a high voltage was applied across oxygen gas.<\/p>\n<p>They discovered that the amount of atomic oxygen available for reactions increased at pressures moderately lower than atmospheric pressure. Their findings promise more energy-efficient, higher-performance plasma technologies.<\/p>\n<p>Plasma is often called the fourth state of matter, alongside gas, liquid and solid. Made of charged atoms and electrons, plasma makes up an estimated 99.9% of all matter in the universe. Although it is rarely encountered on Earth except during lightning storms, artificial plasmas can be generated by applying high electrical voltages across gases, creating so-called nonthermal plasmas. In these plasmas, only the electrons are driven to a high temperature, leaving the atoms in a highly reactive \u201cradical\u201d state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have found a way to make plasma more effective for its wide-ranging uses, from antimicrobial applications to surface conditioning in the semiconductor industry. They mapped the production of atomic oxygen, a key ingredient of oxygen plasma, while a high voltage was applied across oxygen gas. They discovered that the amount [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[493,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climatology","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243752\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}