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Significance statement
Its light weight, a high flexibility, softness and a good chemical resistance provide low density polyethylene (LDPE) a big popularity. For (bio)medical applications, LDPE is one of the best polymers for tube production since the manufacture of these tubes is fast and relatively cheap. However, poor adhesive properties of LDPE (duo to its low surface free energy) might be a problem when a good contact with and/or sticking to other materials is required. To improve the surface characteristics of polymers and to preserve their advantageous bulk properties in an environmentally friendly way the best modification option is to use plasma technology. Atmospheric pressure plasma jets gained great recognition because of they are safe, reliable, compact and easy to handle.
Due to the importance and popularity of polyethylene tubes, the interest to improve the surface characteristics of these tubes is significantly growing. Despite the sufficient amount of work in this field, the full explanation of plasma jet penetration inside tubes does not exist. This work intends to investigate the processes of plasma propagation inside small tubes. Tubes with different diameter are studied. Due to a different plasma jet penetration behavior inside the tubes and due to the different analytical possibilities, a difference is made between small (with inner diameters ≤ 1.02 mm) and larger tubes (≥2.00 mm). The efficiency of the plasma jet treatment is evaluated by using different analytic techniques: capillary action, water contact angle measurement, XPS analysis, optical emission spectroscopy and light emission analysis.
Journal Reference
Plasma Processes and Polymers, Volume 12, Issue 3, pages 271–284, March 2015.
Iu Onyshchenko*, Nathalie De Geyter,Anton Yu Nikiforov, Rino Morent.
Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Research Unit Plasma Technology, Department of Applied Physics, Ghent University, Ghent 9000, Belgium.
Abstract
An atmospheric argon plasma jet has been used to explore the plasma penetration inside tubes of small diameter and the plasma treatment effect on the inner tube surface. The goal of this paper is to show how the tube size can influence the plasma jet penetration and the resulting surface effects on polyethylene tubes with diameters varying between 0.28 mm and 3.00 mm. Optical emission spectroscopy and light emission images have been used to investigate the distribution of active species along the tube length. To examine the plasma treatment effect on the inner tube surface, capillary action, water contact angle measurements and XPS analysis have been used. The results presented in this paper will clearly demonstrate the great potential of atmospheric pressure plasma jets for inner tube surface .
© 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.
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