Influence of Residual Oils on the Adhesion of Metal Coatings to Textiles

Adhesion remains a crucial concern for many textile applications where functional coatings are deposited on their surfaces. Plasma treatments, both for adhesion promotion and deposition, have gained increasing interest to obtain functional textiles. Most of all, plasmas at low and moderate pressures are suitable to clean and activate textile surfaces for a subsequent nano-scaled film deposition such as, e.g., metallization. Silver-coated textiles and fibers are used for their electrical, optical and antimicrobial properties. In order to obtain a sufficient washing fastness through well-adhered metal coatings, clean surfaces by removal of residual oils prior to the deposition are important. Moreover, suitable plasma reactors such as web and fiber coaters are required for reel-to-reel processes. Therefore, different polyester fabrics and fibers were investigated for plasma cleaning and washing tests were performed. Residual oil with amount lower than 0.05 wt% was found to be a requirement for good adhesion.