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A growing interest in polymer applications in such fields as thin-film technology, microelectronics, flexible display, biomaterials, and automobiles requires the special surface properties that could be tailored by surface modification. Up to now, plasma and ion beam pre-treatments are the most widely used surface modification techniques, which can reduce a contamination of polymer surface and can be used for a variety of applications using different treatment gases and providing the uniformity over the large area. On the other hand, plasma is a very complicated process and it is difficult to control the treatment parameters that differ from system to system. Furthermore, the influence of ions, electrons, neutrals, and reactive particles on the modification process is still not very clear.
The fundamental motivation of this research is based on the understanding of an interaction between polymer surface and activated species excited by plasma and ion beam. To understand the influence of the activated species on the change of the physical and chemical properties of polymer, the experiments were performed in ICP discharge and ion beam irradiation in pure and mixture gases. The influence of physical parameters on the surface properties such as roughness and morphology was analyzed by AFM, and the surface chemistry such as binding structure and surface energy was investigated by FT-IR, XPS, and wetting angle analyzer.
The results indicated that the interaction mechanism between a polymer surface and the activated species in plasma and ion beam is as follows: when the activated species interact with the polymer surface, the bonding chains are broken resulting in the formation of smaller molecules and the change of binding energy, and most of them are volatile and easily desorbed or formed free radicals, which participate in different reactions and change the chemistry of polymer surface easily. Understanding of these interactions makes it possible to primarily improve the adhesion of deposited materials on a polymer surface. Further detailed results will be discussed.
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