Dielectric Barrier Discharge at Atmospheric Pressure as a Tool to Deposit Versatile Organic Coatings at Moderate Power Input

Abstract

Plasma coating technologies have been demonstrated as being promising for the fabrication of bioactive and biocompatible materials, among others. Reported efforts are exclusively focused on the two‐step approaches, in which the bioactive component is first immobilized on a substrate, followed by a (vacuum) plasma polymerization treatment or vice versa. However, we believe that upon minimizing the plasma energy, numerous bioactive substances such as enzymes and nucleic acids can be immobilized directly in plasmas via copolymerization with organic precursors, or by direct entrapment in the organic polymer. Therefore, a dielectric barrier discharge was employed at atmospheric pressure and ambient temperature to deposit organic coatings with reasonable growth rates at power input and frequency values as low as possible. Two promising precursors, acetylene and pyrrole, were selected out of 22 organic monomers for full physicochemical characterization. While the acetylene polymer film shows resemblance with its vacuum plasma analogue, polypyrrole coatings produced in vacuum and atmospheric plasmas differ significantly.

A Chemically Defined Carrier for the Delivery of Human Mesenchymal Stem/Stromal Cells to Skin Wounds

“…It has been reliably demonstrated that ppAAc surfaces can be prepared to be stable for up to 300 days, 47 and with regards to scale-up, vacuum pressure technology is now widespread for preparing coatings in industry. 48 …”

The use of DBD plasma treatment and polymerization for the enhancement of biomedical UHMWPE

“…The fact that the polymerization process can be performed at atmospheric conditions highlights its simplicity. [26,27] In order to get an insight in the modifications made to the surface, a varied set of surface analysis techniques are used. Hence, for both plasma methods, static water contact angle goniometry (WCA), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and optical reflectance spectroscopy (OPS) are performed.…”

Improving the bonding between henequen fibers and high density polyethylene using atmospheric pressure ethylene-plasma treatments

“…Their results suggest that Ar/O 2 and NH 3 /C 2 H 4 plasmas as potentially useful tools for bone tissue regeneration procedures. The use of the dielectric barrier dischargeprocess (DBD) to generate a reactive cold plasma to modify the surface chemistry of synthetic a natural materials has been explored by several groups [24,25]. It is characterized by relatively low engineering costs, high speed, and simplicity compared to lowpressure (vacuum) plasma techniques.…”

“…The surface functionalization can be carried out in one step and several functional groups, e.g. OH, COOH, NH 2 , CNH, can be grafted on polymer surface depending on monomer selected [21][22][23][24][25]. de Valence et al [26] studied the effect of cold air plasma treatment on the hydrophilicity of electrospun polycaprolactone scaffolds in order to improve cell-material interactions and promote better tissue regeneration for biodegradable vascular graft applications.…”