An open source multi-physics platform to advance fundamental understanding of plasma physics and enable impactful application of plasma systems

Plasma science is in the early stages of what will be its greatest contributions to society and the global economy since it enabled the scale down of microelectronic devices starting in the late 1980’s and continuing to today, where it contributes to almost one quarter of the steps needed to fabricate state of the art microelectronic devices. Plasma based systems have demonstrated remarkable applications in medicine, agriculture, chemical production, and catalysis. These applications point to the role of plasma science in the broader challenge of addressing the Food, Energy, and Water Nexus (FEWN), highlighted in NSF’s “Big Ideas” Report. The role of plasma science in the FEWN was the topic of a recent NSF sponsored workshop in 2016 that culminated in a report detailing the role of plasmas science along with the overarching technical challenges that need to be addressed in order to make substantive contributions to this basic science challenge. In this report, the overarching need was identified for advances in simulation capability of these systems that address the four unifying research challenges, 1.) Plasma Produced Selectivity in Reaction Mechanisms in the Volume and on Surfaces, 2.) Interfacial Plasma Phenomena, 3.) Multiscale, Non-Equilibrium Chemical Physics, and 4.) Synergy and Complexity in Plasmas.