Surface characterization of industrial flexible polyvinyl(chloride) films

Abstract Surface properties of industrial coated plasticized PVC flooring films have been investigated, with the aim of establishing possible additives migration, which causes chemical surface modification of the film and consequently its adhesion behavior. The storage period, from the production time to the converting operations (printing, laminating…) can also promote the additives migration. The surface of these films was extracted with acetone and water and the organic fraction was identified by surface tension, FTIR and GC/MS. These techniques established clearly that the extracted molecules are issuing from the plasticizers. Virgin and aged films were characterized by contact angle measurement and the surface chemistry was directly studied by XPS analyses. The first technique showed stable wettability properties of the films during storage. The contact angle of water droplet was found to decrease step wisely indicating that some surfactant-type molecules were extracted during the measurements, as confirmed by surface tension measurements. XPS established that a higher concentration of the chlorine-free additives was localized on the surface, which points out a probable enrichment of the surface by the plasticizers and the other additives. This suggests that migration kinetic of plasticizers is very high during the production, because of the high processing temperature.