The COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus is still spreading globally

and blocking its airborne transmission route is of great significance to control the pandemic. The conventional plasma air disinfection devices show advantages in their dynamic and rapid capabilities

but the disinfection performance is limited by a single method

besides

there exists the risk of secondary infection during maintenance. In this work

according to the physiological characteristics of the novel coronavirus

an air disinfection device based on thermally coupled corona discharge was proposed for the improvement of conventional plasma air disinfection technology

which adopted the wire-plate array electrode structure to initiate corona discharge

and utilized heating wires embedded in the collection plate to achieve centralized heating. The discharge parameters were measured

and a discharge power at stable operation was discovered to be as high as 5.6 W

for which the discharge law was found to obey the Townsend relationship. Measurement and simulation of the thermal parameters showed that

compared with the overall air heating

the efficiency of centralized heating was increased by 17 times

with minimal impact on the ambient temperature. Bacillus amyloliquefaciens and Bacillus subtilis bacteriophages were used as model bacteria and virus to verify the disinfection performance. Results demonstrate that the killing performance is effectively enhanced via thermally coupled corona discharge

with a removal rate of residual virus on the collection plate increasing by 99.97%

thereby reducing the risk of secondary infection. This work lays a device foundation for killing the airborne novel coronavirus

and also provides a technical reference for cutting its airborne transmission.