Plasma flux-dependent lipid A deactivation

This paper reports the influence of gas plasma flux on endotoxin lipid A film deactivation. To study the effect of the flux magnitude of reactive species, a modified low-pressure inductively coupled plasma (ICP) with O radical flux ~1016 cm−2 s−1 was used. After ICP exposures, it was observed that while the Fourier transform infrared absorbance of fatty chains responsible for the toxicity drops by 80% through the film, no obvious film endotoxin deactivation is seen. This is in contrast to that previously observed under low flux exposure conducted in a vacuum beam system: near-surface only loss of fatty chains led to significant film deactivation. Secondary ion mass spectrometry characterization of changes at the film surface did not appear to correlate with the degree of deactivation. Lipid A films need to be nearly completely removed in order to detect significant deactivation under high flux conditions. Additional high reactive species flux experiments were conducted using an atmospheric pressure helium plasma jet and a UV/ozone device. Exposure of lipid A films to reactive species with these devices showed similar deactivation behaviour. The causes for the difference between low and high flux exposures may be due to the nature of near-surface structural modifications as a function of the rate of film removal.