Formation of hydrophobic coating on PMMA surface using unipolar nanosecond-pulse DBD in atmospheric air

Abstract Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) can modify the material surface and result in complicated physical and chemical reactions to improve the surface hydrophilicity, which is proved to be an effective method for surface modification. Compared with the traditional ac-excitation DBD, the DBD using unipolar pulses can avoid local overheat of microdischarges and can improve discharge efficiency under some conditions. In this paper, DBD excited by repetitive unipolar nanosecond generator was used to improve the hydrophobicity of Plexiglass (PMMA) surface by means of the interaction between air plasma and silicone oil. The output voltage had a rise time of 40 ns and a full width at half maximum of about 70 ns. The surface hydrophobicity of the PMMA, before and after the surface modification, was evaluated via the contact angle measurement under different experimental conditions. The values of the contact angle shown in this paper were the average of eight measured values, and the standard deviations were also calculated. The surface energy including polar and dispersion components was calculated using the measured average contact angles of distilled water and polyethyleneglycol. The results showed that, as the increase of the discharge voltage, the contact angle increased but the surface energy decreased. With the increase of treatment time, the water contact angle of the modified surface increased at the beginning, and it would reach to a maximum at 7.5 min treatment, and then decreased. The effect of pulse frequency on the modification results was different at various treatment times. In addition, the possible physical and chemical reaction among the DBD plasma, silicone oil and the PMMA surface was discussed.