Vapor Phase Grafting of PET with a 172 nm UV Excimer Lamp

摘要

Poly (ethylene terephthalate) -PET - is arguably the most widelyapplied synthetic polymer and many if not most desired improvementsare surface-mediated, lending great weight to efforts aimed at modifyingPET surface chemistry. Attaching functionality by true chemicalbonds (grafting) is especially appealing because of enhancedrobustness, e.g., durability toward cleaning. Five decades of researchhave led to routes based on, inter alia, wet chemistry alone, plasmaprocessing and UV curing. Even now it is hard to point to acommercialized application of true grafting; certainly cost, processcomplexity, and the success of alternative, simpler approaches arefactors. Recent years have brought increased opportunity to explore theuse of surface radical chemistry through the availability of narrowbandwidth deep UV light sources between 150 nm and 250 nm: excimerlamps. The response of PET at 254 nm, 248 nm, 222 nm, 193 nmand 185 nm has been described, but that at 172 nm (Xe dimer) has not.