The plasma surface treatment of polystyrene(PS) powders was carried out in a Pyrex glass fluidized bed reactor. PS powders were fluidized by gas. An inductively coupled electrode for glow discharge at 13.56 MHz rf frequency and connected to an auto matching network and an rf power generator.
An approach is presented for the graft polymerization polyethylene(glycol) (PEG) onto the surface of PS powders treated with Ar plasma, followed by exposure to air. In the case, peroxides formed by the plasma treatment are likely to be the species responsible for initiating the graft polymerization. Plasma graft polymerization is that the location of grafting is definitely limited to the surface region of polymer materials, independent of the polymerization conditions. It is shown that the amount of peroxides can be determined by the 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazl (DPPH) method. The amounts of peroxides increase with the plasma exposure time to a maximum value thereafter it decreases. The microstructures and composition of the PEG-g-PS was characterized by NMR, FT-IR spectroscopy, scanning electron microscope.
