Investigation of Surface Free Energy for PTFE Polymer by Bipolar Argon Plasma Treatment

Abstract

The low ion energy argon plasma was used for surface modification of Poly tetra fluoroethylene (PTFE) polymer. The plasma was generated between two plane metal electrode by using 50 kHz bipolar power supply. The plasma treated surface was characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The surface free energy (SFE) of plasma treated surface was calculated from contact angle measurement. SFE increases from 33.39 mJ/m2 to 41.40 mJ/m2 with the increase in plasma treatment time and the corresponding contact angle changed from 76? to 60?. XPS study shows that F/C ratio change from 1.8 (untreated) to 1.3 (treated) and O/C ratio changes from 0.094 (untreated) to 0.148 (treated). The XPS analysis shows that both F1s and the C1s spectra for PTFE are marginally modified by plasma treatment. AFM study shows that the average surface roughness (Ra) increased from 8.5 nm to 22.8 nm after plasma treatment. Vicker’s micro hardness of the film increases upon plasma treatment. The increase in SFE after plasma treatment is attributed to the functionalization of the polymer surface with hydrophilic groups as supported from the above observations

Process to Improve the Adherences of Copper to a PTFE Plate

“…Another important fact to note is that in [9,10] it is reported that larger treatment times (larger than 10 minutes) and higher applied power will result in increase of the average roughness of the PTFE, property that in this work is kept constant after the mechanical polishing and plasma process and is the main result here obtained. As a result, a better performance and minimum losses are the characteristics of the waveguides and devices built on this PTFE substrate.…”

Plasma functionalization and etching for enhancing metal adhesion onto polymeric substrates

“…1) leads to a similar conclusion, i.e. Later one, the formed radicals may recombine themselves, with oxygen or nitrogen traces included in the plasma or at the atmospheric pressure leading to the polar functionalization [22][23][24] . The increase of the polar character is induced by pending radical formation on polymer surface by energetic plasma reactive species striking the surface during the plasmatreatment followed by a post-oxydation at ambient air after the plasma treatment.…”

Microwave-Assisted Dip Coating of Aloe Vera on Metallocene Polyethylene Incorporated with Nano-Rods of Hydroxyapaptite for Bone Tissue Engineering

“…Here, the surface morphology of the pristine and the Aloe-vera-coated samples were measured using AFM in contact mode on a 10 × 10 µm 2 area, and the mean average surface roughness (R a ) and the 3D pictographic view were obtained. Each AFM image was analyzed in terms of R a [35]. The surface roughness was calculated using the SpekWin version 1.71.6.1 software (Society for Applied Spectroscopy, Berchtesgaden, Germany).…”