The Properties of Polytetrafluoroethylene Modified by Electrical Discharge of Alternating Current

Abstract

It is experimentally established that the action of an alternating current glow discharge under a reduced air pressure is an effective method to modify the surface of the polymer, that allows to have high adhesion performance at low processing times (Θ = 18-23 deg°, Wa= 142-139 mJ/m2). IR spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy methods show improvement of the contact properties of modified polytetrafluoroethylene films, which go with a change in the chemical structure of the surface. It means that the formation of unsaturated C = C, hydroperoxide, hydroxyl groups causes high adhesive properties of the polymer. The installation created by the authors allows to adjust the area of the treated polymer depending on the power consumption. To compare with other methods of surface modification, it is a resource-efficient and an environmentally sound method to process polytetrafluoroethylene films in a low-temperature glow discharge plasma.