Synthesis and surface modification by macromolecular plasma chemistry

Cold-plasma chemistry has opened up highways for the synthesis of fundamentally new macromolecular surface structures through deposition, grafting and surface functionalization mechanisms. The energy levels of the active species in plasmas are sufficiently high to dissociate all the chemical bonds of organic compounds, including those containing main-group elements, and consequently the resulting multifunctional species can lead, through recombination processes, to the formation of macromolecular structures. Plasma species can also become attached to polymer substrate surfaces creating new functionalities and characteristics. The possibility of modifying even. the most inert inorganic- and organic-material surfaces places macromolecular plasma chemistry in the sphere of advanced technologies. Applications of this novel technique can be envisaged in the fields of microelectronics (e.g. low dielectric constant layers, planarizing films), optics (e.g. nonlinear optics, graded refractive index layers), barrier coating technologies (e.g. controlled gas and liquid permeability, corrosion protection), mechanics(e.g. controlled tribological characteristics) and biotechnology (e.g. enzyme and oligonucleotide immobilization).