ABSTRACT
In the last two or three decades, plasma surface modification of polymer substrates has been extensively investigated and used to develop a variety of industrial applications. The key interest in plasma treatments stems from their capability of modifying the surface physicochemical characteristics without affecting the bulk properties of the materials. Furthermore, when compared to standard wet chemical routes of polymer surface modification, plasma treatments offer distinct advantages given that such processes can be considered as rapid, made easily repeatable via an appropriate control of the process parameters, and are environmentally friendly. As is well known, plasmas contain many kinds of activated species able to interact with polymer surfaces and initiate both physical and chemical phenomena. Depending on the process gas and working conditions selected, plasma treatments may be used to produce etching, cross-linking, formation of surface free-radicals and grafting of specific functional groups (plasma activation), as well as thin film deposition (plasma polymerization) [1-8].
