Gold Coating of Poly(ethylene terephthalate) Modified by Argon Plasma

Abstract

Little information has been published concerning the interaction of gold with polymers. In the context of this lack of information, we decided to investigate the effect of Ar plasma treatment on the surface properties of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) in order to examine its possible application for metal‐polymer adhesion improvement. The plasma treatment leads to an immediate increase of the PET's surface wettability, which however significantly depends on the sample aging, more specifically on the time elapsed after the treatment. X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements revealed that the oxygen concentration in the surface‐near layers increases as a result of the treatment, but that it also changes with time for the samples in contact with the atmosphere, probably as a result of polar group rearrangements. Plasma initiated ablation and Au sputtering increases the surface roughness. The nanoindenter measurements revealed that the treatment increases the microhardness of treated PET. Contrary to hardness, the elastic modulus decreases. Scratch tests showed that the deformation of samples consisting of Au coatings deposited on both pristine and treated PET was elastic rather than plastic. We conclude from the nanoindenter data that the plasma modification does not affect the adhesion of gold on PET, but the X‐ray diffractometry (XRD) analysis showed that the Au film deposited on the as‐treated PET, and on PET aged for 14 d are the most stable.magnified image

Surface characterization of plasma treated polymers for applications as biocompatible carriers

“…There is also an apparent interval of non-regular decrease and increase of contact angle for shorter exposure times, which is caused by the ablation of polymer surface at the beginning of the modification, where the contact angle for PET decreased from (72.9±6.1°) for pristine PET to minimal value of (18.6±2.4°) for plasma power 10 W. The decrease of contact angle is connected to changes in surface chemistry and indicated increase of surface polarity. The interaction of PET [13] with plasma leads to the -C-Obond breakage in ester groups the polymer chain being disrupted. The lower plasma power led to lower decrease of contact angle for all studied polymers (PET, HDPE, PTFE, PLLA).…”

Ablation and water etching of poly(ethylene) modified by argon plasma

“…It is confirmed that plasma treatment leads to oxidation of the surface layer and the oxygen concentration is 31 at.% 1 h after plasma treatment. One can see from Table 1 that with increasing aging time the oxygen concentration decreases due to rearrangement of the treated polymer chains and their fragments [15,21]. The profile and area of individual peak in XPS spectra enable to determine the chemical group concentration in PE surface (see Table 2).…”

Controlled biopolymer roughness induced by plasma and excimer laser treatment

“…It was shown previously that carbonyl, carboxyl and ester groups are created on the polymer surface layers by the oxidation during or after plasma treatment [17]. The re-orientation of surface polar groups on the polymeric chain leads to lower oxygen concentration in comparison to theoretical value thus influencing the wettability [18].…”