The plasma surface modification of polymer materials involves using inorganic non polymeric gases as plasma discharge medium gases to treat and modify the material surface. Commonly used gases include air, nitrogen, argon, carbon dioxide, helium, and oxygen.

The influence of plasma on polymer surface modification mainly consists of the following four aspects: (1) surface cleaning, which is the removal of organic pollutants on the surface; (2) Surface etching, removing weak boundary layers on polymer surfaces and increasing surface area; (3) The cross-linking or branching of surface molecules in polymer materials can strengthen the surface layer; (4) The change in surface chemical structure occurs during plasma treatment, and when exposed to air again after treatment, residual free radicals can react with oxygen in the atmosphere again.

Plasma technology plays an important role in polymer surface modification. The advantages of plasma surface modification process include:

(1) Modification can be limited to the surface layer without altering the intrinsic properties of the polymer.

(2) Plasma surface modification is suitable for most polymer materials, such as polypropylene, polyethylene, polytetrafluoroethylene, etc.

(3) By selecting the plasma used, the polymerization surface can be selectively chemically modified.

(4) The use of gas plasma can avoid problems encountered in wet chemistry techniques, such as residual solvents on the surface and substrate swelling.

(5) During the plasma modification process, the modification of the entire surface is relatively uniform.

The main disadvantages of plasma surface treatment process are as follows:

(1) Most plasma treatment needs to be carried out in vacuum. This requirement increases operational costs.

(2) The process parameters are highly dependent on the system design, and the optimal process parameters for one system are often not applicable to another system.

(3) Expanding the experimental setup to large-scale production reactions is not a simple process.

(4) The plasma surface treatment process is extremely complex, making it difficult to explain the interaction between plasma and polymer surfaces well.(5) It is difficult to precisely control the amount of specific functional groups formed on the surface of polymers.