Why "cold" plasma? Because there is also "hot" plasma with a temperature of up to a million degrees. This is the plasma with which physicists are trying to achieve thermonuclear synthesis, i.e., to accomplish the controlled nuclear reaction of transformation of hydrogen into helium.

    But chemists are quite content with "cold" plasma. To investigate the course of chemical processes at a temperature of ten thousand degrees - what could be more alluring?
Sceptics thought this work would be in vain, because in such a hot atmosphere all substances without exception would share the same fate: they would all be destroyed, and even the most complex molecules would be dissociated into separate atoms and ions. .
Actuality is far more complex. Plasma not only destroys, but creates too. New chemical compounds can readily be synthesized in it, some of which cannot be obtained by other means.

    These are strange substances never described in any chemical textbook: Al₂O, Ba₂O_3, SO, SiO, CaCl, etc. In them the elements display unusual, anomalous valences. This is all very interesting, but plasmochemistry has set itself more important tasks, namely, the cheap and rapid production of already known valuable substances.
And now a few words about its achievements.

    Acetylene is a very important starting material for many organic syntheses, e. g., for the production of plastics, rubbers, dyes, and medicinals. But acetylene is still prepared as of old, by decomposing calcium carbide with water, which is expensive and inconvenient.
 

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