Applying the Macroscopic Kinetic Approach to Plasma Polymerization to the Plasma Surface Modification of Micropowders: Attempt of Correlating Powder Flowability and Plasma Process Parameters

Abstract

The flowability of micropowders can be improved by depositing a non‐continuous coating on the micropowder surface, which reduces the interparticle van der Waals forces causing cohesion of the native powder. Such a coating can be achieved via a plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition in a tubular, inductively‐coupled RF glow‐discharge‐plasma reactor fed by plasma‐polymerizable gases. Here we systematically study the influence of user‐set plasma parameters of feed gas flow rate and plasma power on the resulting powder flowability. We find a quasi‐Arrhenius relation between flowability factor and energy delivered per mass of monomer W/FM. These findings demonstrate that flowability measurements can be used to study the plasma polymerization processes and as a metric to assess surface coatings of powders that are otherwise difficult to characterize by standard metrologies.