Atmospheric pressure surface modification and cross-linking of UHMWPE film by transporting discharge - Sorbonne Université
Conference Papers Year : 2017

Atmospheric pressure surface modification and cross-linking of UHMWPE film by transporting discharge

Abstract

Ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) has been widely used because of its excellent mechanical properties. However, despite these excellent characteristics, UHMWPE needs some additional treatment to increase the surface activity, for better wettability. Plasma treatment is a promising technique that enables the surface modification of polymers without affecting the textural characteristics of the bulk material. In the present work, the helium transporting discharge was applied to improve the surface properties of UHMWPE film. The hydrophilicity of the UHMWPE film was characterized by measuring the contact angle as a function of exposure time. The surface morphology was analyzed using AFM and SEM. The functionalization of the plasma treated UHMWPE film surfaces were characterized by ATR-FTIR, XPS and TOF-SIMS. A schematic of the plasma reactors are shown in Fig.1. A transporting discharge was generated by applying a homemade AC power supply at 5 kHz [1]. A high voltage power supply was connected to the stainless needle electrode which was embedded in the center of a HDPE tube with length of 70 cm allowing the working gas to flow through. In the jet configuration (Fig.1(a)), the plasma jet was directed towards the substrate located at a variable distance from the nozzle and placed on a grounded aluminum substrate holder. In the glow configuration, another grounded electrode was wrapped around the tube outlet and the sample is inside the tube (Fig.2(b)). FTIR results show that besides surface oxidation which is very commonly identified in the case of plasma treated polymer surfaces, in the case of the UHMWPE, we also observe crosslinking which is also a process taking place with the formation of unsaturation. Furthermore, we can point out that the glow plasma-treated sample inside the tube presents for the same treatment time of 7 minutes more crosslinking than the jet one outside the tube. The XPS results confirm those of FTIR i.e. besides oxidized groups such as C-O/COH, C=O and O-C=O (acid or ester groups) detected on the surface, C=C bondings can be also detected at the surface. AFM and SEM images show a smoother surface after the plasma treatment, where a lamellar structure can be identified. A comparison of the mass spectra from untreated and treated sample showed significant differences of signal intensities of ions that could be specifically related to the presence of oxygen-containing and nitrogen-containing species in different setups. [1] F. Sohbatzadeh, and A.V. Omran. Phys. Plasmas, 21, (2014), 11, 113510.
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Dates and versions

hal-04025985 , version 1 (13-03-2023)

Identifiers

  • HAL Id : hal-04025985 , version 1

Cite

Azadeh Valinataj Omran, Alibi Baitukha, Jérôme Pulpytel, Farshad Sohbatzadeh, Farzaneh Arefi-Khonsari. Atmospheric pressure surface modification and cross-linking of UHMWPE film by transporting discharge. 17th CPPA 2017, Jun 2017, Bucarest, Romania. ⟨hal-04025985⟩
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