Plastic bags coated by plasma at atmospheric pressure serve
as a GMP laboratory for the cultivation of adherent cells. The plasma is used
to modify the internal surface of the bag specifically, so that different cell
types can grow on it.
It sounds like one of those puzzles where you have to change
a matchstick figure into something else without adding or taking away any
matches: How do you alter the inside of a closed bag without opening it?
Impossible, I hear you say. But that is precisely what a team of researchers
under Dr. Kristina Lachmann and Dr. Michael Thomas at the Fraunhofer Institute
for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST in Braunschweig have managed to do.
They use plasma to activate the inner surfaces of plastic bags. The plasma acts
as a disinfectant while also transforming the surface of the bag so that cells
want and are able to grow on it.