Low Pressure Plasma Treatment of Medical Plastics

Filip Legein

Europlasma NV
De Bruwaan 5d, BE-9700 Oudenaarde, Belgium
Tel: +32 5530 3205   Fax: +32 5531 8753
Email: filip.legein@europlasma.be

Biography

Filip Legein graduated from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, as a Master of Science in Materials Engineering in 1990, and a Master of Business Administration in 1992.

Filip Legein joined Europlasma as a partner in 2000. His focus has been on business development in the plastics  industry and growth of the company in emerging markets such as China.

Company Profile

Europlasma designs, builds and sells turnkey low pressure plasma treatment equipment. Europlasma develops and optimizes the plasma processes required to solve the material problems of its customers. Europlasma ‘s mission is to help its customers to produce better, cheaper and often unique products in an environment friendly way.

Europlasma is building low pressure plasma equipment in Belgium since 1993. Europlasma equipment is sold and serviced worldwide through local partnerships. In Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia Europlasma is represented by PolyMacs. Europlasma ‘s business is very much driven by research & development.  Test centres for process development, industrialization and subcontracting are available to Europlasma customers in Belgium, China and Mexico. Europlasma owns intellectual property on several key plasma processes and applications.

Abstract

Plasma is known as the fourth state of matter. Adding energy to matter will bring it from solid to liquid, from liquid to gas, and from gas to plasma.

In low pressure plasma equipment a stable and effective plasma is created by an  electromagnetic discharge of a gas at low pressure. Although all systems have the same building blocks the design can be very different depending on the size and the shape of the parts.

Low pressure plasma technology is used in the electronics industry since the 1980 ‘s where it has gradually replaced wet chemical processing for cleaning and etching of plastics, metals and ceramics.

In the 1990 ‘s also the medical devices industry  adopted low pressure plasma technology to modify the surface energy of medical plastics. Plasma activation is a non permanent treatment that allows engineering plastics to be glued or printed.

Recently more complex processes were developed. Monomer gases are polymerized on the surface of the plastic adding permanent functionalities. The functionality can change from super hydrophilic to super hydrophobic depending on the process gas used.

The presentation will give an overview of existing and new applications of low pressure plasma in medical plastics.