Atmospheric Pressure Plasma - Soft Matter interactions for controlled Materials Synthesis

Atmospheric pressure plasmas are a unique system which has been recently harnessed by engineers in a large number of industrial applications like water treatment to medical applications. Obsidian Advanced Manufacturing (Yale university spinoff) has been pioneering an approach to directly print complex materials for applications like flexible electronics using the interaction of atmospheric pressure plasmas with liquid drops carrying suitable reactants. In this talk we will present some key results of the ongoing collaboration to understand and control the reaction diffusion dynamics in these complex non-equilibrium systems. The interactions of atmospheric pressure plasmas which are essentially non-equilibrium allows us to synthesize materials ( semiconductors and metals) with properties and shapes which are usually difficult using conventional techniques.