I want to make the surface of polyurethane-based polymer hydrophilic temporarily, so can anyone suggest me any good approach to do so? I know that plasma etching and acid hydrolysis makes silicone (polydimethylsiloxane) surface hydrophilic but i would like to know if the same method applicable for polyurethane material also or not. If some one knows other ways please kindly comment. thanks in advance.
Please see the attached book chapter on surface modification of polyurethanes. Hope it helps.
If you synthesize the PUR sample yourself, you may modify the hydrophilicity by selecting proper polyol or chain extender components.
You can try with acid at room temperature. The degradation will be very low.
As you said, the simplest way might be oxygen plasma, which makes hydrophilic PU surface within 30 seconds. It works.