Plasma treatment is a versatile process that cleans and activates material surfaces used in the production and assembly of electronic, medical, automotive and aerospace components. This process relies on a neutral ionized gas made up of negative and positive ions and free electrons to make various surfaces more suitable for subsequent operations, such as coating, printing and adhesive bonding.
With manufacturing facilities facing growing demands to deliver high-quality results while increasing efficiency, selecting the right provider and the appropriate plasma solutions is essential — especially for making precision components and tools. Read on to learn more about plasma treatment and its different types.
What Are Plasma Treatments Used For?
Plasma treatments are used to modify surfaces before various production processes. Many materials, such as plastic, have low surface energy, which affects adhesion strength. If the surface energy is inadequate, the components and materials used to make medical devices, consumer electronics and specialty items are less likely to function properly and maintain their appearance. Uneven paint finishes, dust imperfections and liquid beading are issues associated with low surface energy.
Manufacturers use plasma treatments to prepare materials, increasing their surface energy — this is known as surface activation. Plasma treatment for plastics improves the materials’ wettability and adhesive properties and enhances the longevity and quality of any printing, gluing, lacquering or coating applied. Materials like glass, steel ceramics and even wood can also be treated with plasma.
Additionally, treating surfaces with plasma is a common cleaning technique. Plasma cleaning is a dry process that removes organic residues and contaminants from materials and components. This also increases adhesive and bond strength. While surface cleaning and activation are distinct processes, they occur simultaneously with plasma treatment.
How Do Plasma Treatments Benefit Manufacturing Processes?
Plasma treatments benefit manufacturing processes in the following ways:
- Achieving reliable and consistent results: Reliability and consistency are nonnegotiable for industries such as medical devices, electronics, aerospace and automotive, where precision and repeatability are critical. Treating surfaces with plasma provides a standardized and baseline clean to enhance process and quality control for subsequent operations, like bonding.
- Minimizing waste: Impurities can lower wettability, causing problems with coatings or adhesives, such as fish eyes and bubbling. Such issues can result in decreased production yield and increased operational expenses. Using plasma in the cleaning stage improves wettability, so manufacturers can reduce defective products and consumable costs and enhance adhesive and coating performance.
- Reducing safety and environmental risks: Chemical activation and cleaning methods typically produce volatile organic compounds. Beyond being expensive, these chemicals present a substantial hazard for operators. Plasma surface treatments offer an eco-friendly solution that doesn’t involve harmful chemicals and still achieves excellent results. With chemical-free cleaning and activation processes, manufacturers can treat surfaces affected by solvents. The risk associated with the storage and disposal of toxic byproducts is also eliminated.
- Maintaining substrates’ surfaces: When using plasma in material processing, manufacturers can effectively remove contaminants without altering the substrate’s fundamental properties. As a result, plasma treatments are ideal for fragile or expensive surfaces, such as semiconductors, metal, glass and optical fiber surfaces.
- Allowing for seamless integration: Manufacturers can easily integrate plasma solutions into their existing production processes, maximizing operational efficiency by saving space and time.
- Decreasing expenditure: Compared to similar technologies, plasma surface treatment machines require a relatively low investment. In addition to being a cost-effective way to improve product yield and decrease faulty components, plasma cleaning and surface activation methods are faster than manual processes and can speed up production times. Eliminating contaminants before downstream operations also limits downtime, leading to a lower per-unit cost.
Which Industries Rely on Plasma Treatments?
Due to the many benefits of plasma treatments, they’re a widespread practice in many industries when manufacturing components, including:
- Electronics: Electronic devices have numerous delicate components that must be processed via dry, continuous production. Plasma treatments facilitate cleaning before the assembly of electronic parts.
- Semiconductor: Microchip manufacturing demands exceptional surface purity. Plasma plays a vital role in semiconductor packaging, helping to remove oxidization and impurities from bond pads and activate glass films for fusion bonding.
- Medical: Plasma treatments are crucial for sterilizing medical components before use. They also enhance wetting to plastics and other materials, improving adhesion.
- Aerospace and automotive: In these high-precision industries, products are exposed to harsh conditions with almost zero for error. Plasma cleaning helps achieve a higher yield, increased adhesion strength and more rigorous process control, resulting in a more durable and reliable product.
What Are the Different Types of Plasma Treatments?
There are two traditional methods of performing plasma treatments:
1. Vacuum Plasma Treatment
Manufacturers have traditionally performed plasma treatments in vacuum chambers, adding other gases such as argon, helium, oxygen or hydrogen and applying energy or an electrical field. Before these gases are added, the air inside these enclosures is removed. The gases then flow into the chamber, and energy is introduced.
Vacuum plasma treatments can allow for precise and consistent surface cleaning and activation. However, the ion bombardment intrinsic to these methods can harm delicate materials and components, such as wafers, posing a challenge for industries where plasma plays a key role in manufacturing procedures. For example, ion bombardment can roughen the surface or break off pieces of the substrate undergoing processing.
2. Atmospheric Plasma Treatment
Another conventional approach uses high-voltage atmospheric plasma to perform these treatments, in which energetic electrons and highly reactive radicals interact with materials’ surfaces. As no vacuum is required, this method facilitates a more energy- and time-efficient process, making it both scalable and cost-effective. Manufacturers can also treat large or irregular surface areas.
However, a disadvantage is that high-voltage atmospheric plasma causes electron interactions that can lead to an electrostatic discharge (ESD) event, which can damage electrically fragile parts.
A Solution From Surfx Technologies: Argon Plasma Treatments
Surfx Technologies has created a newer, more modern method for plasma treatments to help manufacturing facilities overcome these challenges, achieve high-quality results and increase efficiency. We produce argon plasma at atmospheric pressure, making it optimal for in-line, high-capacity production of products such as medical devices and printed circuit boards. It’s mixed with a reactive process gas like oxygen, which, combined with argon’s inertness, helps remove contaminants from these delicate components.
Because our plasma is atmospheric, there’s no need for a vacuum chamber. Unlike open-air systems, it’s also weakly ionized, and there’s no high voltage to result in ESD. Here are the benefits of argon-based atmospheric plasma treatments:
- Increasing uptime: Treating components or materials in batches inside an enclosement can result in considerable downtime. With Surfx argon plasma, manufacturers can process parts continuously, increasing uptime.
- Allowing for damage-free processes: Because of the weak ionization and atmospheric pressure, our plasma allows for surface cleaning and activation without the risk of damage. This is vital for treating parts extremely sensitive parts like microchips. Even though Surfx plasma is argon-based, it preserves the smoothness of the substrate surface, which is also crucial in semiconductor production.
- Extending product life spans: Another significant advantage of using argon plasma for cleaning and surface activation is that substrates will be less prone to corrode, become unglued or delaminate.
With Surfx Technologies, manufacturers no longer need to face the risks linked to vacuum plasma and high-voltage atmospheric plasma. By reducing these losses, our technology can help save on operational expenses.
Discover the Benefits of Our Atmospheric Argon Plasma Treatments
Surfx Technologies provides atmospheric argon plasma to international manufacturing companies specializing in medical devices, electronics, semiconductors, and automotive and aerospace technology. With our plasma, you can streamline your material cleaning and surface activation processes. Our plasma surface treatment machines also offer unrivaled process controls to transform your production facility.
Contact us to discover the benefits of our patented atmospheric argon plasma, or request a demo to experience the difference with your plasma treatments.
