| AVS 58th Annual International Symposium and Exhibition | |
| Plasma Science and Technology Division | Thursday Sessions |
| Session PS+SS-ThA |
| Session: | Plasma Surface Interactions (Fundamentals & Applications) II |
| Presenter: | Wouter Brok, Innophysics B.V., Netherlands |
| Authors: | E.A.D. Carbone, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands M.W.G.M. Verhoeven, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands W.J.M. Brok, Innophysics B.V., Netherlands A. Stevens, Innophysics B.V., Netherlands J.J.A.M. van der Mullen, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Fast and easy tunable patterning of surfaces has become of growing interest in the last couple of years in different fields like surface functionalization, thin film coatings and biomedical applications.
The concept of Plasma Printing combines the advantages given by the non-equilibrium character of pulsed corona discharges (tunability of surface chemistry), their creation and propagation along small volumes (local plasma treatment) and the mobility of the plasma source as a conventional printer (inline processing). This unique combination allows to treat (in real time) surfaces with arbitrary patterns design with limited restrictions unlike in the use of atmospheric pressure (dielectric barrier discharge) DBD for patterning of surface (also called DBD stamping).
InnoPhysics developed a proprietary Digital-on-Demand PlasmaPrint hardware solution that enables software patterned surface functionalization, etching and deposition of functional coatings on thin (plastic) substrates. A few kV sinusoidal pulse is applied on the electrode gap (pin to plate geometry configuration) in the 50-100 kHz range which generates a 1-10 μs pulsed plasma of about ~ 200 μm diameter in contact with the surface.
In order to assess the performances of the setup, a parametric study of polymers with respect to gas mixtures was performed to detect optimum of surface hydrophilization as well as selective chemistry groups grafting like OH, NH and CO.
PE, PET, FEP as well as PTFE (and PCTFE) were treated by nitrogen and different admixtures of gas/solution namely oxygen, ethanol, water and ammonia (NH4OH solution). The surfaces were analyzed by water contact angle (WCA), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and IR spectroscopy in attenuated total reflectance mode (FTIR ATR).
WCA was used to measure the surface energy of the surface and significant improvements of wetting properties were found for a few seconds of treatment time (i.e. <30o in the case of PET treated by N2/NH3). Grafting of N species up to a few percents was also found for various plasma compositions. The deconvolution of high resolution C1s, N1s and O1s spectra combined with the analysis of the IR spectra for the same conditions allowed eventually to get more insight in the chemical groups grafting at the surface following the plasma treatment.