Surface Etching Of Macromolecule By Atmospheric Plasma Jet

The work presented in this paper mainly focuses on the application of atmospheric plasma jet of the macromolecule material surface etching. The nano-scale patterns on the surfaces were obtained. The structures and composition of the polymers were investigated by SEM, ATR-IR and XPS.The dielectric-barrier discharges (DBD) jet applied in the study was self- designed and fabricated. The equipment is simple, low power consumed and easy controlled. The plasma zone produced by the jet is uniform that is good to surface etching at atmospheric pressure. The discharge process was investigated by analyzing the discharge parameters, including the gas flux, voltage, current and power. The optical emission spectrum was also discussed and the electron temperature was calculated. The electron temperature was about 1.2eVThe effects of etching time, gas proportion, bias voltage on the hydrophilicity, surface configuration and composition of the macromolecular material were discussed. The results show that the plasma treating could improve the hydrophilicity of the materials effectively in a short time. 2% oxygen can improve the durability of the hydrophilicity of the etched surface.SEM results show that the atmospheric plasma jet can selectively etch the material surface. The organic-state would be easily wipe off and the well-arranged reticulation structure would be obtained. The application of bias voltage also showed great effects on the etching directly. ATR-IR results display that the shapes and locations of the characteristic peaks of the etched surface were not changed, which indicates the chemical structure was not changed a lot after plasma treatment. But the transmittance intensity of some peaks related to the oxygen-containing groups were increased after etching.XPS results indicated that content of C was reduced while O, O/C, F/C were increased. The content of F was increased just under bias voltage condition. In the etching process, plasma and bias voltage have great effects on the chemical compsition.This study revealed the great potential of the atmospheric DBD jet on etching macromolecule surface to obtain nano-scale surface pattern. It could have great applications in the field of micro-scale technology (micro-electronics, biotechnology and molecule identification).