1. May 2016   6:04 pm
Hardev Grewal

Hardev Grewal
CEO Plasmatreat PTNA & US - Hayward, CA

It’s NBA playoff time.  Living in Chicago, I am reminded of the years where arguably one of the world’s greatest basketball players, Michael Jordan could not win a championship. Although the Bulls eventually won six titles in eight years during the 1990s success did not happen until Jordan built a strong team around him. For three straight years the Bulls battled the Detroit Pistons in the playoffs, and for three straight years they left bruised and beaten.  The Pistons were simply the better team. As Jordan himself observed “talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.”

Plasma is an all-star in the role of cleaning, activating, and coating surfaces to make them for printing, coating or bonding. But the most successful applications are often those where there is coordination and teamwork with other parts of the manufacturing process such as process  control, material handling, dispensing, or curing.

In a couple of weeks, Plasmatreat is teaming up with two other companies we have had great success with in the past; Precision Valve and Automation (PVA) and DELO Adhesives. Together we are presenting a technical webinar:


 

Fast Optical Bonding:
An Integrated Solution for Flat, Curved, and Flexible Displays
Thursday, May 12, 2016
2 PM Eastern Time
(there is no cost to attend)


 

This webinar discusses the latest trends in electronic display manufacturing such as changes in substrates, flexible and curved displays, and UV LED curing. For our part, Plasmatreat will discuss how plasma excels at cleaning and activating plastic and glass substrates for better performance.  Our partners will discuss advance s in adhesives and sealants, dispensing and curing equipment, and system integration.

But the real benefit of this initiative is in providing customers with an integrated, team-oriented, solution.  Many plant managers have learned the lesson of loyal Bulls fans – even with the best players, it often takes a team to win. Casey Stengel said, “finding good players is easy – getting them to play as a team is another story.”  Teamwork avoids the blame and finger pointing when things go wrong.  I am proud of Plasmatreat, but I am also proud that Plasmatreat has teamed up on so many occasions with leading industry suppliers to produce a successful process.

I invite you to attend this webinar. To register click on the link below:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/7488361753958739204

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Khoren Sahagian

Khoren Sahagian
Materials Scientist

Editorial July 2014

Plasma treatments are a permanent and covalent substrate modification.  However many references note diminishing effects of plasma treatments with time.  One generalized conclusion is that the plasma modification is a temporary effect.  This conclusion is not inherently accurate or applicable to all plasma and material systems.  In truth there are many factors that govern the success and longevity of a plasma modification.  Research in plasma lacks harmonization in equipment, setup/configuration, and material selection.  These are key variables in a plasma modification.  Results from one method may not necessarily translate well to another experimental setup or class of material.  For this reason some engineering reviews of gas plasma do more to confound than to elucidate the scientific dialogue within industry.

 

Equipment design is of particular relevance in plasma industry.  This includes but is not limited to the electrode configuration, matching, RF frequency, and equipment geometry.  Many apparatus used in academia boast custom fabricated equipment or custom modification to existing tools.  Their equipment exemplifies engineering capabilities.  In my opinion the effectiveness of the equipment to a material system is specific and rarely generalizable to all materials or apparatus.

 

Plasma chemistry and substrate material should be matched correctly.  Some polymer systems may be either resistant or sensitive to specific plasma chemistry.  It is not enough to report gas, pressure, and power.   A complete characterization should understand the plasma stoichiometry and a hypothesis of the surface interaction.  Furthermore it must be accepted that many polymer systems are mobile, may swell with gas or moisture, or may undergo relaxation mechanisms.  Therefore be careful to consider pairing a material system with appropriate plasma source and plasma chemistry.

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Category: Cleaning / Glass
25. November 2013   2:31 am
Hardev Grewal

Hardev Grewal
CEO Plasmatreat PTNA & US - Hayward, CA

Is it true that one of the first commercial uses of plasma ashing was to ablate fish to expose mercury contamination?

Sitting around the lunch table the other day, our chemist expanded on an early use of plasma for one of the first commercial applications: ashing fish to expose mercury (or other metals) to evaluate the impact of contamination from industry. While it seemed like a logical use of the technology, I couldn’t get my head around this as one of the first commercial applications….so did a bit of research and finally reached out to one of the experts in the field of vacuum technology: Donald Mattox. He confirmed that low pressure plasma ashing has been used for over 50 years for trace element analysis – an early use of replacing wet chemistry!

Don sent the following citations confirming the use:

1962: C. E. Gleit and W.D. Holland, “Use of electrically excited Oxygen for the low temperature decomposition of organic substrate” Anal Chem. Vol. 34 (11) pp 1454-1457

1977: M. Velodina, “Quantitative determination of Mercury in Organic materials by means of a low temperature, high frequency discharge plasma in oxygen” Analytical Letters 10(14) 1189-1194

And Don added one of his favorite Oxygen plasma cleaning stories (from his book “Foundations of Vacuum Coating Technology”)

When preparing to aluminize the Palomar mirror, John Strong notified the mirror polishers that he would be using a new cleaning technique using ‘a special fatty acid compound with precipitated chalk.’ When he arrived the ‘special fatty acid compound’ was Wild Root Cream Oil hair tonic (ad jingle: ‘You better get Wild Root Cream Oil, Charlie; It keeps your hair in trim; Because it’s non-alcoholic, Charlie; It’s made with soothing lanolin’). He stated, ‘In order to get glass clean you first have to get it properly dirty.’ The oil residue was ‘burned-off’ using an oxygen plasma in the vacuum deposition chamber. (From The Perfect Machine: The Building of the Palomar Telescope, Ronald Florence, pp 382-386, HarperCollins, 1994).

I’m assuming that the following US Patent from 1978 helps corroborate his story: 4088926: Plasma Cleaning Device (for cleaning organic contamination on optical surface) 

I found this quite interesting and did some additional research that I would like to share with my readers:

Plasma, atmospherically, has been used professionally by museums and NASA to remove carbon contamination or char, selectively, as a restoration technique for fine art.

Before and after image of artwork cleaned by atomic oxygen.

From http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/business/AtomicOxRestoration.html

Some later work of interest was published by Texas A&M: Used RF plasma to selective remove inorganic mater from paint and prevent damage to the substrate (rock). Organic components can then be analyzed and dated.
1992: Direct Radiocarbon Dating of rock Art. Radiocarbon, V 34, No. 3, 1992, P 867-872. J. Russ, M. Hyman and M. Rowe, TAMU.

I could go on and on and on… Plasma truly offers us a tremendous tool box for modification of myriad materials!

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3. May 2013   7:38 pm
Khoren Sahagian

Khoren Sahagian

Did you know that PTS is internationally recognized for modifying the surfaces of microfluidic & biological devices?  Check us out on Lily Kim’s www.Fluidicmems.com list of manufacturers.  These partnerships in small devices have a global footprint! Our team’s contribution to the community are elements of advanced polymer chemistry and gas plasma physics; a knowledge that simply translates to targeted conjugation of complex compounds.   We say complex because of the uniquely commercialized methods by which our gas plasma interacts with a substrate.  In some biological applications it is desirable to deliver functional species intact and un-fragmented.  The PTS development lab closely consults its affiliates in how to construct novel surfaces for these new applications.  Although fluidic technologies start micro many need to end big and in high volume.  We make the big or small step using plasma.

My colleague Mikki Larner shared with me a chart illustrating the growing importance of polymeric substrates in the Medical and Microfluidic arena.  Two undoubtedly powerful factors are processing  cost and scalability.

Fluidic substrates

REF:http://www.i-micronews.com/reports/Microfluidic-Substrates-Market-Processing-trends-Market-data/4/217/

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Hardev Grewal

Hardev Grewal
CEO Plasmatreat PTNA & US
CEO Plasmatreat PTNA & US - Hayward, CA

Editorial April 2012

America and Canada are a truly great countries. Both regions are characterized by truly freedom loving people, both feature strong democracies despite the daily stalemates and political quabbles.  While their economies in general are powerful and have created some of the largest wealth per capita in the world, the recent 10-15 years have been marked by, in my view, myopic activities in industry: Manufacturing was given up on. With China achieving first “most favored nation status” and then later gaining access to the WTO, thus allowing for tax and duty favored imports, many manufacturing companies started to believe that they could not compete with China as well as other countries in the SE Asia region with their low wages and other low operating costs. Comprehensive new supply chain systems were set up, new operating and trading relationships were established, more and more company managers became ex-patriates. Some companies that wanted to continue producing product in North America were forced by large retailers such as WalMart to move their operations to a China location. The common crede became: Operating our production in China is the better way, there is no such future in North America.  

I disagreed from the Get-Go. I always believed that America needs manufacturing. One needs to build things to create value. Our countries cannot simply be service and consumption oriented societies. We saw what happened if when relied on the finance/banking sector alone. It created huge wealth only for a very few and when it all went wrong, we were all asked to pay the bill.

Manufacturing creates jobs at all levels, stimulates personal and professional creativity, helps shape products and processes and let us focus on the future by taking direct control. Plasmatreat works with manufacturers all over the world creating better and more productive operating environments. Here in Canada and the USA we have the potential to reclaim a top spot in the global arena of manufacturers. Designing and building product creates not only possibilities domestically but also sets the stage for successful exports. The USA in particular has been suffering from a negative trade deficit for several decades now. We need to think about reversing the flow of dollars into America not away from America. We need to support the Reindustrialization of America – we need to believe again in manufacturing. Plasmatreat together with our many industrial partners continuously are presenting ideas how to create competitive operating environments right here in North America. Our projects reach into various markets such as Solar, Medical, Packaging, Automotive and Electronics. We look foward to mastering the challenge to compete with low cost production countries, but we believe we can. Do you, too?

Till next time,

Andy

 

 

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