Low temperature atmospheric microplasma jet array for uniform treatment of polymer surface for flexible electronics

Abstract

In this paper, the uniformity of polymer film etching by an atmospheric pressure He/O2 microplasma jet array (μPJA) is first investigated with different applied voltage. Plasma characteristics of μPJA were recorded by optical discharge images. Morphologies and chemical compositions of polymer film etched by μPJA were analyzed by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). By increasing the applied voltage from 8.5 kV to 16.4 kV, the non-uniformity of the luminous intensity of the plasma jets increases. It is interesting that the plasma treated regions are actually composed of an etched region and modification region, with distinct morphologies and chemical compositions. The diameters of the etched parylene-C film show the increase of non-uniformity with higher applied voltage. SEM results show that the non-uniformity of surface morphologies of both the modification regions and etched regions increases with the increase of applied voltage. EDS and XPS results also present the significant effect of higher applied voltage on the non-uniformity of surface chemical compositions of both modification and etched regions. The Coulomb interaction of the streamer heads and the hydrodynamic interaction between the plasma jets and the surrounding air are considered to be responsible for this phenomenon. The results shown in this work can help improve the processing quality of polymer film etched by an atmospheric pressure microplasma jet array and two applications are demonstrated to illustrate the uniform downstream surface treatment.