Custom design is performed on client specification and demands and in close collaboration with experienced contractants.

Europlasma has its own test facilities including the test set-up for fibres and textiles on laboratory and production size. This first evaluation is giving the opportunity to convince ourself on the capability of plasma before production integration.

For small scaled production a service is delivered to plasma treat products in reasonable time and cost.

Future will bring us to real continue machines which can be placed in-line or off-line.

The high technical demands, environmental aspects will force textile industry to pre treat their material and to get the most optimal adhesion or wettability performance. The presently available materials, read polymers, will always need surface activation or preparation before further treatment.

At this moment batch wise machines will fill in the demands of the sector, and as it is for web coaters, batch based machines still perform day in, day out their job.

Plasma technology: what is plasma?

A new alternative for better modification of polymer, ceramic and metal surfaces and textiles.

Introduction

Surface preparation and modification has gained in the last decennia an enormous interest and discovered new applications. It is a complete other approach to modify only the surface properties without changing the bulk properties. This delivers new materials with new possibilities, which opens perspectives to resolve production or design problems or even develop complete new applications.

Production problems are mainly caused by the substitution of the base material to new materials for example polymers, which have not the correct surface behaviour for further processing.

In design it asks of course another way of thinking because one has to take distance from the conventional mechanical and chemical modification of surfaces.

The low pressure plasma technology is such an alternative where on a dry, environmental friendly and cost-efficient way the surface IS modified on microscopic level. This without manual operations or the use of chemical products.

Low pressure plasma technique

A plasma is a partially ionised gas containing ions, electrons, atoms and neutral species. To be able to ionise the gas in a controlled and qualitative way the process acts under vacuum conditions. Therefore a vacuum vessel is pumped down to a pressure in the range of 10-2 to 10-3 mbar with the use of high vacuum pumps. The gas which is than introduced in the vessel IS ionised with the help of a high frequency generator. The formed environment is the so called 4th state of matter. Which means that if sufficient energy is supplied that solids can be melted to liquids, liquids can be vaporised into a gas, and gases are ionised into a plasma. A specific characteristic of a plasma is the visible glow discharge with colours ranging from blue-white to dark purple depending on the type of gas (see pictures above). The high reactive particles react with the surface of the substrate. The advantage of this plasma is that it is a well controlled and reproducible technique.