Medical Polyurethane Covered by Diglyme Plasma Polymer

Abstract

Plasma polymerized diglyme (pp-diglyme) is a promising class of biomedical materials due to hydrophilic features when deposited under excitation by RF low power. In order to reach this goal this paper deals with plasma polymerization of diethylene-glycoldimethyl-ether (diglyme here after) by RF-excited plasmas under power ranging from 5 to 20 W and pressure of 6.6 Pa. Films were deposited on glass and aqueous polyurethane dispersion substrates (PUD). For the values of RF used in this paper, film thickness varied from 51 nm to 64 nm. Such films were deposited on flexible biocompatible polyurethane that is not resistant to acids and bases as plasma polymerized diglyme. The recovering of these materials with pp-diglyme films let them with a resistant biocompatible feature that is appropriate for use in aggressive environments. The contact angle measurements show the variation from 56° to 64° for a surface energy which varies from 68 mJ/m2to 59 mJ/m2, respectively. The FTIR data show that the main functional groups in the polymeric film structure are C-H (3000 cm-1to 2900 cm-1), C-O-C and C-O (1200 cm-1to 900 cm-1) similar to the polyethylene oxide (PEO) structure. The refractive index results show a variation from 1.58 to 1.63.