Plasma Treatment Industry Applications
Plasma Treatment cleans, etches and functionalizes plastic and metal surfaces to improve adhesion. Enercon plasma treatment solutions may be configured for a wide variety of industrial pretreatment applications for both web and films, as well as dimensional objects. The examples below highlight many industries where in-line plasma treating is used to improve throughput and product quality.
Plasma, Flame & Corona Treating Plastics
Plastics with chemically inert and nonporous surfaces have low surface tensions making them unreceptive to bonding with inks, coatings and adhesives. Plasma treatment of plastics is used in the automotive, medical, packaging, assembly and many other industries.
Improve Ink Printing Adhesion with Surface Treating
Flexographic, gravure, ink-jet, screen, and pad printing applications require surfaces to meet minimum adhesion requirements. Understanding how surface treating systems prepare surfaces for water based and solvent based inks is key to successful ink adhesion.
Flexible Packaging
Flexible packaging converters utilizing aqueous inks on polyester-based structures may experience improvements in ink adhesion by employing plasma-based surface treatment systems.
Plasma & Flame Treatment for Automotive Part Adhesion
In-line Plasma & Flame treatment are recognized as green technologies in the automotive industry as they help reduce cost and improve performance without the need for hazardous primers and chemicals.
Wire & Cable Marking Plasma Adhesion Assistance
Atmospheric plasma treatment promotes the bonding of aqueous inks, coatings and adhesives to provide excellent abrasion and smudge resistance. Enabling the use of inkjet markings increase throughput for wire and cable markers.
Folding Carton
Atmospheric plasma assist systems clean, etch and functionalize folding carton surfaces to improve bond strength, increase line speeds and improve quality. Commonly used materials include polycoated, polybacked, virgin kraft board, specially coated materials, UV lacquered surfaces and recyclable materials. Some users of plasma treaters have been able to reduce adhesive costs by replacing hot melt glue with cold set adhesives in their folder gluers.
Textile Functionalization
Plasma3 technology envelops and cleans the fibers of woven and nonwoven structures to significantly enhance their wettability, printability, dyeability and fiber capillarity (faster dye/ink uptake). Significant improvements in the ink adhesion, dyeing depth and colorfastness of textile webs, yarns and filaments have been achieved, along with the pre-sterilization of various medical-grade textiles. Learn more about plasma treating nonwoven textiles.
Battery Technology
Microporous membrane materials such as battery separators which are treated by Plasma3™ have enhanced hydrophilicity and wickability, significantly improving the efficiency of the battery cell.
Solar Thin Film Cell Manufacturing
Plasma3™ provides a surface cleaning and activation solution for roll to roll photovoltaic applications. Atmospheric plasma surface treatment systems provide an in-line solution to economically improve adhesion for films, foils and sheets. It is ideal for use prior to coating, laminating and deposition processes. It is highly effective at treating a wide range of substrates including Aluminum, Copper, Stainless Steel, EVA Film, ITO Film, PEN Film, PET Film, Polyimide Film and Glass. Learn more about atmospheric plasma surface treatment for photovoltaic applications.
Flexible / Rigid Flex Circuitry
Plasma3™ cleans and functionalizes polyester, polyimide, copper and stainless steel layer components by combining ion and electron bombardment with reactive plasma chemistries. Activation of Plasma3™ gas chemistries combined with UV energy volatilizes and removes surface contaminants while simultaneously raising surface energy and modifying surface functional groups.
Printed Circuit Boards and Metal Cleaning
Cleans copper and stainless steel layer components of PCBs before liquid photoresist coating with ion and electron bombardment after the etching process. Plasma3 is removing rolling oils and other surface contaminations from aluminium and steel foils prior to slitting and rewinding. Activation of Plasma3™ gas chemistries combined with UV energy to create a chemical reaction with the surface contaminants, resulting in their volatilization and removal. Learn more about plasma treatment for PCBs.
RFID Tags
Plasma3™ is removing printed conductive ink or stamped foil debris from the chip site for clean contact with the antennae leads. It also functionalizes the entire surface of the RFID inlay for adhesion to film and/or paper label layers. Learn more about plasma treatment for RFID tags.
Foams
Uniquely conductive to treating these materials, Plasma3 is increasing the surface tension of closed cell foams to improve lamination adhesion to films without pinholing.
