a thermoplastic surface has to treated with corona treatment to before glueing it to other substrate. Can one use plasma treatment for this thermoplastic surface and get the same or similar results?
You may consider various APP sources that include corona discharge, dielectric barrier discharge (DBD), and an APP jet. The corona discharge is limited in its applications due to the restricted area for thin film deposition and the inherent non-uniformity since no grounded surface can be near the field emission points. To ensure stable plasma operation in DBD, the material processing is confined in the gap between the electrodes, i.e., typically within a few millimeters. In contrast to the corona and DBD discharges, the APP jet source not only generates a stable and uniform discharge but also offers downstream plasma processing to increase the chemical selectivity and reduce the surface damage.
In a lot of application in industry atmospheric corona guns are used a pre treatment to get good adhesion of glues. The advantage of these systems is that they are simple, fast and can be mounted on robot's for automatic high volume production.
You can also use the common vacuum plasma equipment to get a similar results (e.g. oxygen barrel systems). The systems are more complicated (vacuum, RF, etc), more expensive and there is a limited volume for samples. Since they operate at low pressure they are very efficient in treatment of polymers and high energies can be used for surface treatments/modifications.