Partial Support for Graduate Students and Junior Faculty to Attend the 3rd International Workshop on Microplasmas

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Proposal Number: CTS-0602883Principal Investigator: Jose L. LopezInstitution: Saint Peters College, Jersey City, NJProposal Title: Partial Support for Graduate Students and Junior Faculty to Attend the 3rd International Workshop on Microplasmas This award partially supports the attendance of graduate students and junior faculty at the 3rd International Workshop on Microplasmas, which will be held from May 9-11, 2006 in Greifswald, Germany. The properties of microplasmas at high pressures are dominated by collisional and radiative processes beyond binary collisions involving ground-state species such as step-wise excitation processes (the excitation of excited states followed by collisions of the excited species with other particles resulting in new energy transfer routes) and three-body collisions leading e.g., to the formation of excimers. Such an environment facilitates many interesting applications including high power lasers, opening switches, novel plasma processing applications and sputtering, EM absorbers and reflectors, remediation of gaseous pollutants, medical sterilization and biological decontamination and excimer lamps and other non-coherent vacuum-ultraviolet (VUV) light sources. The International Workshop on Microplasmas is uniquely positioned among the many plasma and gas discharge physics conferences as the only forum devoted exclusively to the advancement of the scientific challenges and technological opportunities afforded by microplasmas. The subject areas of the Workshop include basic plasma physics aspects relevant to microplasmas and microdischarges such as experimental and theoretical studies of these plasmas as well as modeling and simulation of the key processes in these plasmas. The Workshop also includes aspects related to the technological applications of microplasma and microdischarges with a special emphasis on biological and medical applications.Inspection of the scientific programs of many traditional gas discharge and plasma conferences reveals a rapidly increasing number of invited talks and entire session devoted to the physics and applications of microplasmas. This workshop series represents the only forum devoted entirely to this emerging field. The study of microplasmas is a new and emerging field that attracts young researchers in significant numbers because they see scientific challenges as well as technological opportunities in this area upon which they can build a successful academic careers. Additionally, microplasma applications appear to be an attractive playing field for small, hightech start-up companies which perceive that this field has a favorable timeline for marketplace realization of basic plasma concepts.