Vacuum and atmospheric plasma technology
Plasmalex offers turnkey vacuum and atmospheric plasma solutions, delivering both chemistries and equipment, and customized solutions.
Why Plasma?
Plasma is considered the fourth state of matter after solid, liquid and gas. By adding energy matter can be transformed from solid to liquid, from liquid to gas and from gas to plasma.
At the plasma stage matter exists in the form of a gas of ions and free electrons and is highly electrically conductive. Although plasma is abundant in the universe, natural occurrences are relatively rare on earth. Lightning, static electricity and auroras are the primary sources of natural plasma.
Plasma can be generated in different ways. CPI, specialises in atmospheric plasma. Europlasma is specialised in low pressure (vacuum) plasma.
Benefits of plasma technology for surface treatment solutions
- High value cleaning, activation and etching.
- The process penetrates in the molecular level of material.
- Non-thermal process: suitable for very sensitive materials
- Conformal coating
- Permanent effect
- Ultrathin (1nm to 5µm)
- Invisible
- Tunable functionality : hydrophilic, hydrophobic, oleophobic,…
- Good thermal and chemical resistance
Low environmental footprint
- Compared to conventional chemical coatings Plasmalex’ processes guarantee the lowest environmental footprint
- The lately developed PlasmaGuard® coating chemistry is halogen free.
- Moreover, thanks to their high filtration system, Plasmalex machines are safe in use.
Plasmalex has unique R&D capabilities.
We are unique in offering industrial-scale solutions for both static as well as reel to reel PECVD equipment & chemistry
- 30 years of experience allowed us to optimize machine & process designs for low pressure plasma applications
- We have built an extensive track record of customized solutions
With multi-stage coating technology
Plasmalex has the most advanced technology in the world for industrial size roll-to-roll atmospheric plasma applications:
- We have a patented electrode/gas diffusor assembly which ensures:
- Control of the chemistry
- A homogeneous ultra-thin coating (1-10 nm) of over 2 m width
- Reduced electrode fouling
- No contamination of the product by plasma generated powders
Industrialized atmospheric plasma applications come with some challenges that we overcome
- Inerting (O2and H2O)
- Gas and monomers handling
- Power management
- To avoid the risk of poor coating quality
- Process industrialization over width and length
- Homogeneity over wide width and length
Therefore we have an important focus on R&D with:
- Continuous Research on the interaction of the different process parameters
- There are up to 89 interconnected plasma parameters to control (classically 20-40)
- We have a continuous process to control the results so that a stable treatment quality is guaranteed
- Continuous Research on various generator technology.
- We continuously test different technologies to select the optimal technology for each application
- We focus on chemistry in the plasma as a sustainable answer to the traditional wet chemistry solutions
