How can one hydrophilize poly(lactic acid)=PLA, or to be precise, surfaces of 3D-printed PLA objects? Of course with the usual recipes, ozone, UV, oxygen plasma... but it turns out that the water contact angle is still quite high. I would like to go below 10º. Even prolonged oxygen plasma in the mbar range does not work, and one can even get close to melting...
This paper by Demming et al.
Phys. Status Solidi A 208, No. 6, 1301–1307 (2011) / DOI 10.1002/pssa.201000967
shows a way, oxygen plasma, followed by PEG-methoxysilane linking, but maybe you know a (one-step) simpler way?
Dear Alexander M Bittner, the following recent work shows results of WCA less than 10° using argon and oxygen plasmas. My Regards
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polymertesting.2021.107097
Great, thank you, that looks good! I will probably contact the authors because their "0.5 bar" are likely 0.5 mbar, and this would merely require to fit a second gas bottle to our low pressure plasma tool.
Btw, I already checked the Ar plasma (at 0.5 mbar, not 0.5 bar) - yes, indeed the WCA is lower than after the O2 plasma, and the method is simple!
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