COATING TECHNOLOGY
functionalised coating that readily grafts to lubricious coatings.
QUANTIFYING ADHESION IMPROVEMENT According to Barden, when companies present PVA TePla with a challenging surface chemistry problem they are encouraged to visit the firm’s lab in California, USA. This gives them an opportunity to brainstorm with their technical team and run experiments together. It is during these technical customer/supplier meetings that many of the best experimental matrices and ideas are produced. In addition to designing and manufacturing plasma systems, the company also serves as a contract manufacturer and so has the in-house equipment to run parts and conduct experiments, with full customer involvement. To conduct adhesion-testing experiments, Barden
says the customer often already has proprietary and sometimes confidential techniques and equipment in place. However, to provide qualitative data on adhesion improvement, PVA TePla uses goniometers to measure surface free energy and the respective dispersive/polar components. Contact angle goniometers measure the angles of liquids on the surface of the substrate to determine the surface energy. Although these tests are often conducted
using water, this only measures the polar component so PVA TePla also uses other organic liquids to measure dispersive components as well. “By more completely measuring the surface
free energy, we can come up with a measure of the quantitative change that occurs before and after plasma treatment,” says Barden. “On the customer end, they can then correlate those measurements with their actual bonding experiments to ensure that the best possible bond is being achieved.” l
One of PVA TePla’s inline plasma treatment system machines
For more information visit
www.pvateplaamerica.com
75 95 10
25
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www.engineerlive.com
EL_Int Design Eng_Thermal_185x121mm_082017_prepress 10 August 2017 11:26:05
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