Figure 6.

(a,b) Combination treatment that involves plasma treatment followed by Ag sputtering improved antimicrobial activity of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) nanotextiles against Gram-negative E. coli and Gram-positive S. epidermidis. Plasma treatment was performed at the input power of 3–8 W for up to 240 s, and the Ag sputtering was performed for 80–300 s. The samples were allowed to incubate in the presence of bacterial culture for 2 h, and then cells were left to grow overnight on agar plates. Reproduced from Slepicka et al. (2021) [58] under the conditions of the CC BY license. (c) The non-thermal plasma pin system used to deliver plasma treatment uniformly over larger surface areas. Not seen on the image is a plastic box that was used to cover the system during treatments and optical measurements. The low-density polyethylene (LDPE) samples were placed within the plasma discharge for the duration of the treatment. Shown is the plasma discharge in ambient air. Reproduced from Scally et al. (2018) [60] under conditions of the CC BY license.