Foundations of plasma surface functionalization of polymers for industrial and biological applications

International audienceAbstract Polymer materials are widely employed in many fields due to the ease with which they can be formed into complex shapes, their versatile mechanical properties, light weight, and low cost. However, many applications are hindered by the chemical compatibility of polymer surfaces, which are generally hydrophobic and bond poorly to other media such as paints, glues, metals and biological media. While polymer surfaces can be treated by wet chemical processes, the aggressive reagents employed are detrimental to the environment, limiting the range of modifications that can be achieved by this route. Plasma functionalization is an attractive alternative, offering great versatility in the processed surface characteristics, and generally using environmentally benign compounds such as rare gases, oxygen and nitrogen, as well as very small quantities of organic precursors. Since the modified surfaces are only a few monolayers thick, these processes are extremely rapid and low in cost. The first industrial process to be developed was plasma oxidation, which increases the surface energy of the polymer, improving the adhesion of paint, glue and metal to the component. Plasma oxidation can be achieved using both low-pressure and atmospheric pressure (APP) discharges. Subsequently, many other processes have emerged, allowing other functional groups to be grafted, including amines, hydroxyl and carboxylic acid groups. Plasma polymerization, starting from gaseous monomers, allows a whole new family of surface chemistries to be created. These processes have many exciting applications in the biomedical field due to the control they give on biocompatibility and selective interaction with living cells. This article will present the fundamentals of plasma interactions with polymers, the plasma devices employed (both at low-pressure and at APP) with their advantages and drawbacks, and a survey of current and future applications

Kostenstruktur von Plasmaverfahren: Die Anteile von Investitions-, Betriebs- und Verbrauchskosten an vakuumgestützten Beschichtungsverfahren

At a first glance coating costs of plasma processes seem to be dominated by high investments. Here it is shown that operating costs are at least of the same importance. Thus, it is reasonable to accept coating costs as only one contribution amongst others to the overall production costs. The example „solar cells” shows that further enhancement of the coating process is less effective compared to an increase of energy conversion efficiency. On the other hand it appears more effective for cost reduction of hard coatings to decrease energy consumption and to increase the deposition rate instead of minimization of investment costs for the coating machine. The cost structures of depositions from the liquid phase and plasma processes are of the same order but growing environmental demands clearly favor the latter one (no liquid waste, etc.). The commonly used argument, that it is always preferable to run coating processes at atmospheric pressure without the use of (expensive) vacuum equipment rather than under vacuum conditions needs to be reconsidered particularly when noble gases are necessary at atmospheric pressure to obtain equal qualities of the coatings