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373 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 89, No. 4, April 2021 Barnes et al. 373
strengths for mixture of air plus 17.2 Torr of water vapor such as those for inserting thermometers into reaction vessels,
were up to about 25% greater than for dry air at the same is used. This part is selected to fit the mouth of the
total pressure, thus quantifying the effect of water vapor Erlenmeyer flask described above. The glass burette tip above
molecules in microwave plasma generation in their resonant is then inserted through the bottom of the stopper until it pro-
cavity geometry. trudes from the top by about 10 mm. The PTFE stopcock
In the case of breakdown fields required when using very housing is then placed back over the protruding burette tip.
short microwave pulses, MacDonald30 also confirmed that All of the edges of this system are then sealed with regular sil-
“in the absence of an electron from some auxiliary source, icone glue. The seal is sufficient to hold a vacuum for many
the breakdown field measured would be very large, since the hours. We have also found that a properly matched
initial electrons would have to be provided by field emission microwave-safe PTFE/glass vacuum flow control adapters,
or other surface effects.” such as StonyLab flow control adapters, attached to any glass
There are some distinct differences between the previous container/flask, or modified Schlenk tube flasks with glass
studies and our present work. First, our plasma chamber is stopcock (GrowingLab), or similar stopcocks for glass vac-
not specifically designed as a resonating cavity for any spe- uum desiccators can serve this purpose also (Fig. 2). The main
cific mode; rather, two different glass flasks and two differ- point here is that the design of the container is not limited to
ent microwave ovens of different sizes produced similar the ones described here; rather, any microwavable vacuum
qualitative results. Second, no external source of triggering container with a stopcock valve that can hold vacuum in the
electrons either in the form of radioactive sources or syn- container can be converted into a plasma chamber. A vacuum
chronized photo-electric emissions were necessary to gener- hose can be directly attached to the top of the valve allowing
ate plasma in a microwave oven as seen in the video.37 the system to be evacuated to various pressures with a small
Third, theoretical calculations show that in a 700 W kitchen vacuum pump. Once the properly evacuated flask is put in the
microwave (one of the microwaves that we used in our microwave and the oven is turned on, after a few seconds
374 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 89, No. 4, April 2021 Barnes et al. 374
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Fig. 1. A schematic of the construction of the sample holder for the microwave-generated plasma. One of the crucial parts needed is a simple air-tight valve.
An inexpensive one can be fabricated from specialty parts as shown here, by modifying a PTFE and glass burette tip and rubber stopper. Bottom left to right:
The sample is inserted into the Erlenmeyer flask; the vacuum valve is opened and the vacuum pump is used to evacuate the flask; the valve is closed and the
vacuum hose removed; the flask is transferred to the microwave oven, and as the microwave is turned on, plasma is sparked to treat the surface for the desired
length of time (Ref. 37). To characterize the spectrum of the plasma, this process is repeated without a sample while placing a UV-Vis spectrometer in front of
the microwave window.
ignition (please see the figures in the supplementary material and the plasma generation mechanism of a gas under a con-
for illustrations). When the vacuum pressure is decreased stant strong electric field leading to Townsend avalanche is
further to 68 mTorr or less for a 250 ml flask and 69 mTorr well known.42,44 The striking similarity of both the spectra
or less for a 125 ml flask, the plasma ignition time tends (Fig. 4) lead us to confirm that although the source to ener-
towards infinity in this asymptotic limit. We have used two gize gas is different in two cases: (a) DC electric field in a
different kitchen microwaves with several different glass gas discharge tube, while (b) electromagnetic waves in
containers and the overall characteristic remains the same, microwave-generated plasma, the chain reaction is some-
although the plasma initiation times may vary slightly what similar, as described in the Appendix.
depending on the size and geometry of the microwave ovens.
UV-Visible absorption spectra of plasma are also recorded C. Classroom integration of this experiment/
using a desktop CCD spectrometer (Exempler, B&WTek) demonstration
and are shown in Fig. 4. The spectra of the microwave
plasma clearly show the dominant nitrogen and oxygen This simple plasma generation demonstration can be inte-
peaks indicating ionization of these molecules. To under- grated into undergraduate physics classrooms and labs to
stand and compare the microwave plasma generation with a teach several key concepts, such as the nature of electromag-
DC discharge plasma, we also built a gas discharge tube netic waves, the kinetic energy of ions and electrons in elec-
with fixed electrodes, generated air plasma in it, and com- tromagnetic waves, dipole moment vectors, force and torque
pared the spectra obtained from the gas discharge tube with generated by an electric field, etc. We have created several
that generated by the microwave. The reason behind this concept cartoon-based clicker questions on these key con-
comparison is that gas discharge plasma is very well studied cepts, given in the Supplementary Material,69 in order to
375 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 89, No. 4, April 2021 Barnes et al. 375
electrical and thermodynamic properties of a substrate for
various purposes.46 A change in the surface energy of a
substrate can easily be ascertained by measuring the contact
angle of a liquid on the surface. The contact angle of a liq-
uid drop, i.e., the angle measured where a three-component
interface exists between a liquid drop, a solid surface, and
the ambient air, is measured by first taking cross-sectional
pictures of the drop using a camera and then analyzing the
contour of the drop using software. Normally, the designa-
tion of a hydrophobic material is reserved for surfaces with
a liquid contact angle of greater than 90 . Contact angles of
less than 90 indicate a hydrophilic material with good wet-
ting properties.
376 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 89, No. 4, April 2021 Barnes et al. 376
Fig. 4. The microwave-generated plasma spectra are compared with the corona discharge (gas discharge) tube air plasma spectra. Nitrogen and oxygen lines
are visibly identified in both spectra.
Fig. 5. Change in contact angle of water in a microwave oven, with and without plasma. Droplet pictures at the top show increasing contact angle with
extended plasma treatment time by adding sufficient surface energy of the soft cured PDMS polymer substrate. To differentiate the effects of microwave and
microwave-plus-plasma, one can choose a suitable pressure (say 2000 mTorr) and put the substrate in a 250 ml flask. As this pressure is above the higher
asymptotic limit of the Paschen-like curve (Fig. 3) turning the microwave on won’t spark plasma in the chamber. However, if we put an identical sample in a
125 ml flask at the same 2000 mTorr pressure and turn the microwave on, the substrate can be treated with both microwave and plasma, thus giving us a way
to differentiate the effects of microwave plasma quantitatively.
377 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 89, No. 4, April 2021 Barnes et al. 377
Fig. 7. Raman spectra and absorption studies for graphene oxide (GO) and
plasma treated graphene oxide (PTGO) films.
378 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 89, No. 4, April 2021 Barnes et al. 378
Fig. 8. Graphene oxide films before (left) and after (right) treatment in 4 s of air plasma. Clearly, the free-standing sample is not very useful for applications
despite its large change in resistance. A similar change in resistance was attained by treating the bursts-sample with four separate 1-s pulses of plasma, which
prevented the plastic substrate from warping significantly.
substrate. A strong bond prevents the device from leaking, of the tubes to be connected. This will ensure tight fitting of
becoming damaged, or developing passages by which the the inlet/outlet tubes to the channels. (5) Finally, the side of
confined solutions could escape the network of channels. the PDMS with open microchannels and the glass slide are
Plasma has been used in this application extensively, as it treated with plasma to obtain closed channels with one flat
379 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 89, No. 4, April 2021 Barnes et al. 379
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Fig. 10. Adhesive force of the untreated PDMS surface is measured using the AFM force spectroscopy method.
C3000 FlexAFM), and the representative graph is shown in glass can be achieved to make microfluidic channels with
Fig. 10. The relative change in adhesive force due to surface this simple technique. Needless to say that the domain of
plasma treatment is shown in Fig. 11. these applications is enormous and our hope is that this
paper, through classroom/lab integration and this frugal
IV. CONCLUSION alternative to conventional and expensive plasma treatment,
would enable more researchers to delve into these cutting
In this work, we have demonstrated that a simple plasma edge research areas leading to more innovation and
generating device can be constructed from a household discovery.
microwave oven and a vacuum flask. We have shown that
this apparatus can be used in surface treatment of a substrate
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
for several cutting-edge research applications. Varying
degree of plasma exposure to a PDMS substrate leads to a This work was partially supported by the National Science
change in surface energy, and hence a change in contact Foundation (HBCU-UP Award # 1719425), the Department
angle of a water droplet on the substrate was observed before of Education (MSEIP Award # P120A70068) with MSEIP
and after the surface treatment. Upon exposure to plasma, a CCEM Supplemental award, and Maryland Technology
change in opto-electrical properties of a metal oxide semi- Enterprise Institute through MIPS grant. K.D. would like to
conductor such as ZnO was demonstrated using FTIR spectra thank Dr. Jim Marty of Minnesota Nano-Science Center and
analysis. Significant change in electrical resistance of gra- NanoLink for providing support and materials for the
phene oxide thin films was also observed as an effect of photolithography process in microchannel fabrication and
plasma exposure. Moreover, it was also shown that irrevers- Dr. Aaron Persad of MIT for many helpful discussions and
ible bonding between certain elastomers like PDMS and suggestions. The authors also thank MIT Technology
Review for featuring this work.45
380 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 89, No. 4, April 2021 Barnes et al. 380
Fig. 12. This slide elaborates that we are surrounded by electromagnetic waves. Other slides are available in the Supplementary Material (Ref. 69).
381 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 89, No. 4, April 2021 Barnes et al. 381
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