ABSTRACT
The complex nature of plasma polymerization was explained by the rapid step growth polymerization (RSGP) in that the recombination of free radicals constitutes the main mechanism to increase the size of molecules, as described in Chapter 5. The presence of many dangling bonds (free radicals trapped in a three-dimensional network), the change of the concentration of dangling bonds as a function of the duty cycle of pulsed discharge, and the dependence of the deposition rate on molecular structures all support the RSGP mechanism. Conversely, these phenomena all together could not be explained reasonably without the principle of RSGP mechanism. This implies that the main polymerizable species are free radicals that are created in the luminous gas phase.
