Abstract
In the last decade atmospheric pressure plasma jets (APPJs) have been routinely employed for surface processing of polymers due to their capability of generating very reactive chemistry at near-ambient temperature conditions. Usually, the plasma jet modification effect spans over a limited area (typically a few cm²), therefore, for industrial applications, where treatment of large and irregular surfaces is needed, jet and/or sample manipulations are required. More specifically, for treating hollow objects, like pipes and containers, the plasma jet must be introduced inside of them. In this case, a normal jet incidence to treated surface is difficult if not impossible to maintain. In this paper, a plasma jet produced at the end of a long flexible plastic tube was used to treat polyethylene terephthalate (PET) samples with different incidence angles and using different process parameters. Decreasing the angle formed between the plasma plume and the substrate leads to increase in the modified area as detected by surface wettability analysis. The same trend was confirmed by the distribution of reactive oxygen species (ROS), expanding on starch-iodine-agar plates, where a greater area was covered when the APPJ was tilted. Additionally, UV-VUV irradiation profiles obtained from the plasma jet spreading on the surface confirms such behavior.
Highlights
Atmospheric pressure plasma jets (APPJs) have drawn much attention mainly due to their successful application for treatment of materials [1,2,3] as well as biological targets in so-called plasma medicine [4,5]
In previous papers we have reported the development and biomedical applications of a bendable plasma jet produced at the end of a flexible plastic tube [23,24,25,26,27]
The presence of excited atomic oxygen and OH confirms the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the plasma plume, which are commonly associated with polymer surface modification [18,19]
Summary
Atmospheric pressure plasma jets (APPJs) have drawn much attention mainly due to their successful application for treatment of materials [1,2,3] as well as biological targets in so-called plasma medicine [4,5]. APPJs are capable of generating chemically rich plasma plumes in open air where ions, electrons, photons, and reactive species are transported to the target allowing the treatment of large and irregular surfaces [6]. They have a great flexibility concerning their construction designs and sizes allowing the generation from micro-scaled jets [7] to plasma plumes up to several centimeters in length [8]. Active species generated in the APPJs are able to interact with only the material’s surface while the bulk is kept unchanged This characteristic is very important in applications that require biocompatibility and interphase processing, such as painting, dying, and composite manufacturing. The first is surface functionalization, where new functional groups are introduced onto the Polymers 2020, 12, 1028; doi:10.3390/polym12051028 www.mdpi.com/journal/polymers
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