"Start Ups"
Knoxville News Sentinel
September 21,2000
by Larisa Brass
So many potential applications exist for Atmospheric Glow Technologies' plasma that president and CEO Kimberly Kelly-Wintenberg can scarcely keep track of them all.
The Rockford company's brand of the "fourth state of matter" could be used to sterilize sensitive medical instruments, she said, and attack microbial colonies on medical devices such as catheters, endoscopes and even pacemakers or other medical implants.
Researchers at the company are investigating ways to unleash the plasma on articles contaminated by chemical and biological warfare. It could be used to sterilize meats and produce, clean diesel engine exhaust and filter indoor air. It can change the properties of polymers and fabrics, potentially making diapers more wickable and Coke bottles dyeable. Kelly-Wintenberg, a microbiology researcher and adjunct professor at the University of Tennessee, launched Atmospheric Glow Technologies with three other UT grads in May.
The company is licensing a technology developed by J. Reece Roth, director of UT's plasma science laboratory, in the late 1980s. Roth invented a way to transform air into plasma, a substance made of electrically charged particles that doesn't qualify as a liquid or a gas. Roth invented a reactor to create the plasma at room temperature without a vacuum, using air as the gas. The process produces some ozone, but when the plasma escapes the reactor, it recombines with air without any nasty byproducts.
The plasma breaks down cell structures of microorganisms and temporarily changes the properties of other materials. Hence the myriad of potential applications, said Kelly-Wintenberg. Most notably, the plasma could be used to sterilize heat- and moisture-sensitive instruments that now have to be cleaned with harsh chemicals, she said.
This week, Atmospheric Glow Technologies hopes to complete its licensing process and receive its first venture funding from the Tennessee Center for Research and Development. The $ 100,000 investment will be enough to see the company through its first year, said Kelly-Wintenberg. The company will celebrate with an open house Friday from 4 to 7 p.m.
Over the next 12 months, "we are going to look at these different applications," she said. "And obviously, anyone will tell you this is absolutely too many (applications) to try to develop with this small a company. This is absolutely true. However, we do not want to ignore them, so we're going to spend the next year essentially (deciding) which ones we want to focus upon more short-term and then the ones long-term."
The company will also develop a working prototype of the reactor that creates the plasma, she said. Eventually, Kelly-Wintenberg said, the company plans to start manufacturing the devices here.
"We're looking at having an apparatus commercially available in two years," she said. Devices for commercial and military use will be available for market sooner than the sterilization reactors, which must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. And, she said, although there are many potential business directions, the equipment itself can be used everywhere from food processing plants to the battlefield with few adjustments.
"People will say, oh, you've taken on too much," she said. "But the way we look at it, the technology can easily be tooled to do these different applications."