Plasma Treatment and Polymerization of Textile Reinforcing Materials

Abstract

In this paper different types of surface modification of polyester cords by low-temperature plasma at atmospheric pressure was studied.The first type cords were activated by pulse surface positive corona discharge generated in a plasma reactor or by coplanar dielectric surface barier discharge (DCSBD) in nitrogen or ambient air plasma at atmospheric pressure. The values of the static and dynamic adhesion of untreated cords and the plasma treated cords demonstrated possitive influence of plasma surface treatment on the adhesion of cords to rubber. The mechanical properties were not significantly affected by plasma treatment.The second type of plasma treatment involved the modification of cords by plasma polymerization in mixture of nitrogene with butadiene. The plasma layer homogenously coated the cords surface. The results shove, that values of static and dynamic adhesion for plasma polymerisation of treated cords are comparable with the standard chemical treatment based on resorcinol-formaldehyde latex (RFL).From the study of the surface properties of the plasma treated cords by SEM, AFM and XPS is evident that both chemical interactions and morphological changes of the surface cord fibres are responsible for the improved adhesion between treated reinforcing materials and rubber blend.