Functional Surfaces

Many applications, and/or manufacturing processes, make it necessary to provide the surface of materials with adapted functionalities. Developing new methods, coating systems and practice-relevant coating processes, are the main focuses of our work. The functionalization of surface treatment on plastics, metals, textiles or glass, is of particular importance in the field of primer and chemical surface treatment. In addition to conventional methods such as wet chemical treatment or gas phase coating, new surface treatment processes using light in the UV, and IR wavelength range, are also being developed. If necessary, these processes are combined with chemical treatment.
Extensive instrumentation and technical equipment is available for the determination of surface properties. This takes into account the measurement of surface tension and surface energy, using the contact angle method, to determine the wetting behavior:

Surface Tension and Energy

With the help of the contact angle measuring instrument (OCA 15 from Dataphysics GmbH), the wetting behavior of solid surfaces can be characterized by different liquids. The measuring device has an automatic 3-channel dosing system, with a motorized xy-table control and a digital image recording, as well as digital evaluation.

The determination of the contact angle between a liquid and a solid according to measuring principle of the horizontal drop is shown. — Determination of the contact angle between a liquid and a solid (measuring principle of the horizontal drop)

With this method, the contact angle (both static as well as dynamic), the surface tension and the free surface energy (including its polar and disperse shares), are determined.