engleski

Influence of ICP Etching on Hydrophobicity of Polymer Blend Surfaces

The concept of superhydrophobic or ultrahydrophobic surfaces inspired by the lotus leaf (Nelumbo) surface, gained a lot of significance in the past [1]. The specific surface roughness is essential for the superhydrophobicity and self-cleaning (lotus effect), but it also has great impact on type of fluid flow inside microchannels. In this work a method for designing hydrophobicity of polymer blends by creating specific surface topography is described. Polymers used for polymer blend preparation are polylactide (PLA) and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), two polymers which are most often used in fused deposition modelling - an additive manufacturing (3D printing) technology. Also, low-density polyethylene (PE-LD), and high-density polyethylene (PE-HD) were used. In order to increase hydrophobicity by changing the topography of two-phase polymer blend surface, blends are etched by using inductively coupled plasma (ICP) before the fluorocarbon-based coating treatment done in the second step [2]. During the surface treatment process of PLA/PE polymer blends, polylactide is etched significantly more than polyethylene and specific "island-like" surface morphology with 10° to 20° higher contact angle is created. ABS based polymer blends did not show this property. This work has been supported by Croatian Science Foundation under the project entitled “Development of materials for 3D printing of microreactors” (UIP- 2014-09-3154).

hydrophobicity, polymer blend, ICP etching

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