The Preparation Of Functional Surface Via Mist Polymerization By Plasma Initiation

Polymer offers excellent properties, including mechanical properties, chemical stability andelectrical insulation etc. In recent years, polymer has been developed quickly and applied tovarious fields in science and technology, and thus has become indispensable material in modernlife. However, because polymer has high crystallinity, low surface energy and weak boundarylayer on polymer surface, there are problems in wettability and printing and affect their widelyapplications. Modification of polymer surfaces is an effective way to exploit new properties andbroaden the application fields for polymer. The traditional methods of surface modification(surface coating, surface oxidation, high energy radiation treatment, surface graft polymerization,etc.) are defective in damage on surface structure, uncontrollability on shape and thickness, lossof material properties on surface, complex post processing. Gas phase assisted surfacepolymerization (GASP) is a new approach developed to construct micro architectures on solidsubstrate surfaces. This strategy can avoid the disadvantages involved in liquid monomersolutions and can tailor the surface morphology by varying the duration of exposure to thevaporized monomers. However, GASP has disadvantages, such as monomer concentration thin,vacuum conditions and long polymerization time. The GASP was modified in this work. We usea gas flow carrying micro droplets produced from a monomer solution for polymerization on aplasma treated surface to improve surface properties, referred to as “mist polymerization”. Thistechnique combines elements of droplet fixing, in situ polymerization, and deposition of theresulting polymer from the monomer solution. Together, these elements provide a means ofproducing nanostructures on a surface with desired properties. The morphology and thehydrophilicity of the surface are also tailored by controlling a wide range of factors such as exposure time, monomer concentration, and solvents. In addition to being a relatively low cost,highly tunable surface modification process, mist polymerization can also possibly minimize thesolvent damages on substrates and to expand the scope of usable monomers. The diversifiedmorphologies are expected to be useful in other surface related applications such as printing,fibers, microelectronics, biomaterials, and controllable release of chemicals.