Plasma

Note Profile

Abstract

About

Plasma is the note for the smell of ionised gas: lightning, an electric arc, a plasma lamp, a plasma cutter. It is sharp, cold and metallic. The parts that make it up are ozone, nitrogen oxides, air that smells sterilised, and hot metal. It has no relation to blood plasma.

Scent Profile

Aquatic_ozonic leads and it is the only facet with a cited source behind it. Wikipedia gives ozone as 'pungent, metallic, dry' with a 'distinctively pungent odour', and ozone is the component of an electrical discharge whose smell is actually documented. Mineral is the metal half, and it has two independent grounds: Wikipedia's 'metallic' for ozone itself, and the note's own definition, which names 'the smell of heated metal'. Clean_musk is 'sterilised air', which is the one phrase in the definition that is not a material but a quality, and this facet is where a scrubbed, empty-smelling air belongs. Smoky and aldehydic are the sharpness of an arc: something is being heated to incandescence, and the ozone descriptor is 'sharp'. Neither is directly sourced, and the 0.18 spreads say so. Below the line, cooling_mentholic carries the cold, prickling quality of the sensation rather than of a molecule. Sour is the nitrogen oxides, which are acidic in water and which nobody has described olfactively for this note. Sulphurous is the closest facet to 'resembling chlorine bleach', and it is a bad fit - there is no halogen facet - so the number is small.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeTop · ~2h lasting

Family Fresh & Citrus, Elemental

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

Fantasy accord, built rather than extracted. There is no plasma material. The smell it names is real physics: an electrical discharge splits atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen and produces ozone and nitrogen oxides, and the electrode or workpiece heats. Ozone is the one component with a documented odour, given by Wikipedia as 'pungent, metallic, dry' and 'a very specific sharp odour somewhat resembling chlorine bleach', detectable at 0.1 ppm. In practice the accord is assembled from ozonic and metallic aroma chemicals.

Usage in Perfumery

Rare. One Fragrantica placement and none in the second vocabulary. Used in synthetic, futuristic and machine-themed compositions, at the top, where the brief calls for charged air rather than sea air.