| AVS 64th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Plasma Science and Technology Division | Monday Sessions |
| Session PS+AS+SE-MoM |
| Session: | Atmospheric Pressure Plasmas |
| Presenter: | Lucia Bonova, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
| Authors: | L. Bonova, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign I.A. Shchelkanov, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign C. Ahn, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign S. Chaudhuri, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign D.N. Ruzic, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Plasma surface treatment at atmosphere pressure is a fast growing industry. Among other applications, surface treatment of metals for adhesion and corrosion resistance improvement has attracted widespread interest. Being operated at atmosphere pressure, various types of plasma discharge devices provide efficient, cheap and large scale processing capabilities. In this area, surface treatment of aluminium for surface properties modification is of great interest as it can decrease steps in process for final coating deposition, reduce usage of harmful chemical reagents, which in their turn require costly dispose procedures, and increase functional coatings performance.
The ECAP experiment (Evaporative Coatings at Atmosphere Pressure) was developed at CPMI (Center for Plasma Materials Interaction at UIUC) as a device and a method for multicomponent metal coatings deposition at atmosphere pressure utilizing a 2.45 GHz microwave plasma torch. The device is capable of coating deposition from a solid metal state and from gas carried precursors as well as composites with processing gas like ZrO. These capabilities make ECAP a very flexible tool for gradient coating deposition for surface functionalization and adhesion improvement. In this gradient coating, the alumina facing materials is gradually replaced with a second layer material with perfect adhesion for final functional coating.
Current work discusses several methods, which were used to improve aluminium surface wettability and adhesion to an epoxy. As a fundamental experiment, we have conducted the simple treatment on aluminium plate by ECAP which operated with feedstock gas of evaporated H2O and He. It shows remarkable enhanced epoxy adhesion on aluminium sample against the control condition. System configuration for roll-to-roll applications and broad area coatings/cleaning are also discussed.