Enhanced surface friction coefficient and hydrophobicity of TPE substrates using an APPJ system

An APPJ system was used to deposit a coating that combines a low friction coefficient with a high water contact angle (WCA) on a thermoplastic elastomer substrate (TPE) that is used in automotive profiling. The main drawback of this research is that groups that improve the hydrophobicity of the surface worsen its tribological properties. To overcome this, this study explored the use of various mixtures of differing proportions of two precursors. They were a siloxane, aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) that was used to reduce the friction coefficient by its content of SiOx and a fluorinated compound, (heptadecafluoro-1,1,2,2-tetrahydrodecyl)trimethoxysilane (FLUSI) that was used to improve the water-repellency characteristics, due to the presence of CF2 long chains. The coatings were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), dynamic Water Contact Angle (WCA), stability tests and tribological tests. It was found that an increase of the absorbance area under the SiOSi peak and inorganic groups is related to lower friction coefficients. On the other hand, the higher the CF2 percentage is, the higher the WCA is. The sample that was coated with 25% of FLUSI and 75% of APTES combined the improvements of both functional properties, the friction coefficient and the WCA. It has an average friction coefficient that is (0.530 ± 0.050) 51.5% lower and a WCA that is (θadv = 119.8° ± 4.75) 4.4% higher than the uncoated TPE sample. A satisfactory stability in humid ambient for twelve months showed a slight decrease of WCA (4.4%) for this sample. The results of this study permit one to realize the effectiveness of using fluorinated precursors to avoid a significant decrease in the WCA when applying a precursor to anti-friction improvement.