Advanced Technologies for Industry 4.0: A Challenge for Plasma Scientists

Plasma scientists face a significant challenge in adopting the concepts of plasma reactors to the demands of Industry 4.0. A vast majority of current industrial plasma reactors do not meet Industry 4.0 standards because of the insufficient characterization of processing parameters and the lack of a feedback loop. In order to comply with these standards, plasma reactors will have to adopt characterization techniques capable of real-time operation. Smart production lines will have to integrate optical and particle sensors into a control system. Any deviation of the prescribed range's plasma parameters will be automatically managed by changing the adjustable discharge parameters. A few obstacles are presented and briefly described. Drifts of plasma parameters at fixed discharge parameters because of spontaneous changes in the coefficients of heterogeneous surface exothermic reactions represent a common challenge. The other one is the hysteresis in plasma parameters versus the discharge parameters. The directions for developing robust, reliable, and affordable sensors are presented.