Surface Characterization of Atmospheric Pressure Plasma-Deposited Allyl Methacrylate and Acrylic Acid Based Coatings Bernard Nisol,* Abdelkrim Batan, Franc ¸ois Dabeux, Alexandros Kakaroglou, Iris De Graeve, Guy Van Assche, Bruno Van Mele, Herman Terryn, Franc ¸ois Reniers 1. Introduction In the field of advanced coating technologies, plasmas are getting more and more popular for several advantages such as their need of only small quantities of gases and precursors as well as their small energy consumption, which make them environmentally advantageous. In addition, the growth of interest in their use has made possible the creation of easy, often one-step, fast protocols which result in efficient, durable and specific surface treatments. [1] Furthermore, researchers now focus on the upgrade of the processes from vacuum technology to the atmospheric pressure. This makes it possible to avoid the expensive and time-consuming requirements of vacuum reactors (pump- ing systems, seals, transfer chambers) and could make the industrial scale systems much easier to design and process. Among the coatings deposited at atmospheric pressure, both inorganic, such as SiO x and SiN x , [2] silane-based, [3] titanium oxide, [4] diamond-like carbon, [5] and organic, such as polystyrene-like, [6] sulfonated-PS coatings, [7] poly(ethy- lene glycol)-like, [8] polypyrrole, [9] can be realized nowadays. A review about the use of atmospheric plasma to deposit thin coatings was published recently. [10] Full Paper Dr. B. Nisol, A. Batan, F. Dabeux, F. Reniers Faculty of Sciences, Analytical and Interfacial Chemistry, Universite ´ Libre de Bruxelles, 2, bd. du Triomphe, CP 255, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium E-mail: bnisol@ulb.ac.be A. Kakaroglou, I. De Graeve, H. Terryn Research Group Electrochemical and Surface Engineering (SURF), Department of Materials and Chemistry (MACH), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium G. Van Assche, B. Van Mele Research Group Physical Chemistry and Polymer Science, Department of Materials and Chemistry (MACH), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium This work deals with the plasma-deposition of allyl methacrylate (AMA) and acrylic acid (AA) on metallic substrates. The plasma setup used is an atmospheric pressure radio frequency (RF) torch. Infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy (IRRAS) and X-ray photoelectron spec- troscopy (XPS) are used as characterization tools. In addition, spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) has been used to control the thickness and calculate the correspond- ing deposition rates. Whereas the surface chemistry of plasma deposited AMA does not seem to be influenced by the plasma power, acrylic acid based coatings are strongly degraded with the increasing power. AMA seems to allow an efficient polymerization, while at the same time is particularly resistant to plasma induced fragmentation in the range of power used. Binding Energy (eV) 280 282 284 286 288 290 292 294 pd-AA Binding Energy (eV) 280 282 284 286 288 290 292 294 pd-AMA 30 W 50 W 80 W COOR C=O/O-C-O C-OR C-C/C-H 564 Plasma Process. Polym. 2013, 10, 564–571 ß 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim wileyonlinelibrary.com DOI: 10.1002/ppap.201200022