ABSTRACT
Plasma treatment is a promising technique of improvement various properties of the materials surface. In the case of elastic polymers, its application is limited: the deformation of the substrate easily damages the continuous coating. The creating of islet-like coating could be the solution. In this work, the formation of discontinuous carbon coatings on a surface of soft elastic polyurethane by a pulsing magnetron sputtering of a graphite target is studied. The thickness and continuity of the coating depend on the number of magnetron discharge pulses. However, the discontinuous coating was not achieved by simple reduction of pulses due to desorption of carbon. Therefore, the surface was preliminary activated by the nitrogen plasma for one minute. The islets were created and investigated depending on the duration of the carbon deposition (1000 or 1500 pulses). The average size of an islet was ~70 μm with the thickness of 10…25 nm. Some islets have a wrinkled surface. The uniaxial deformation changes the islet surface but no fracture of the coating was observed.
