Enhanced adhesion of conductive coating on plasma-treated polyester fabric: A study on the ageing effect

In recent years, there has been growing attention on intrinsically conducting polymers, such as polypyrrole (PPy) because of the wide range of possible applications. Adhesion to other materials is a pending problem that could be tackled by enhancing the chemical affinity of the surface toward PPy coating. In this work, low-temperature plasma pretreatments were used for improving adhesion of PPy on polyester (PET) fabrics by changing the surface chemistry and generating a microscopically rough surface. Oxygen and argon plasmas were used to treat both sides of PET fabrics before PPy deposition by in situ chemical polymerization. Moreover, PPy depositions were performed 1 h, 1 week, and 1 month after the plasma treatments to study possible ageing effects. Different chemical/physical characterizations (contact angle, surface energy, atomic force microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy) showed the efficacy of plasma pretreatments in inducing wettability on PET fabrics and promoting adhesion of the PPy layer. The enhanced adhesion was confirmed by abrasion tests and subsequent surface resistivity and color measurements.