A polyester film has a vast application field, due some properties that are inherent of this kind of material such as, good mechanical resistance, chemical resistance to acids and bases and low production cost. However, this material has some limitations as low superficial tension, flat surface, low affinity to dyers, and poor adhesion which impede the use of the same ones for some finality as good wettability. Among the existent techniques to increase the superficial tension, plasma as energy source is the more promising technique, because of their versatility and for not polluting the environment. Then, due to its good acceptance, polyester films were treated with oxygen plasma varying the treatment time from 10 to 60 min with an increase of 10 min to each subsequent treatment. After plasma treatment the samples were characterized by contact angle, surface tension, Raman spectroscopy, Infrared attenuated total reflection (IR-ATR) and atomic force microscopy, with the aim to study the wettability increase of treated polyester films as its variables. The plasma technique is very efficient in modifying polyester films, and this is true because all treated films showed a wettability increase and none significant variation was observed at ageing time plasma treated samples. So, plasma treatment contributed for wettability increase through surface functional groups implantation as through creation of roughness at the surface plasma treated samples.
Surface tension; plasma; wettability; contact angle; polyester
