engleski

Increasing Hydrophobicity of Polymer Blend Surfaces by ICP Etching

The concept of superhydrophobic surfaces (water contact angles higher than 150°) is inspired by the surface of lotus leaf [1]. It gained a lot of significance in the last years because the hydrophobicity of a surface depends on its chemical composition and surface roughness. The specific surface roughness is essential for the superhydrophobicity, self-cleaning (lotus effect) and it can have great influence on 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), low-density polyethylene (PE-LD), polyurethane (PUR), polyamide 12 (PA12), vinyl acetate homopolymer (PVAC) and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS). Fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printing technology uses polymer filaments produced from PLA and ABS. 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-LD polymer blends PLA is etched significantly more than PE-LD and specific "island-like" surface morphology with 10 - 20° higher contact angle is created. 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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