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Abstract: Grating-like structures having a period of 416 nm were produced on the surface of poly-carbonate films by two-beam interference realized by the fourth harmonic of Nd:Yag laser. The period of the structures was half of that the applied master grating, the ratio of the width of the valleys to the period was tuned by the intensity, the depth of the modulation was increased by the number of laser pulses. Pulsed force mode atomic force microscopy was applied to study the topography and the adhesion on structured surfaces with sub-micrometer resolution. The adhesion modulation caused by the topography was calculated along line cross-sections of the AFM pictures taking into account the tip and surface geometry. The separation of the effects of the topography and the laser-induced material changes proved that the adhesion is increased at the areas illuminated by laser beam having a fluence above the melting threshold. The laser-induced material changes cause an additional adhesion increase at the valleys of the structure. It was shown that the adherence of albumin results in dense packing on poly-carbonate surface parts having sub-micrometer periodic adhesion modulation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Teflon thin films were prepared via pulsed laser deposition using an ArF excimer laser (λ=193 nm, FWHM=20 ns) from pressed powder pellets. The applied fluence was 6.25±0.23 J/cm2, the number of pulses was 10 000, the pressure in the vacuum chamber was 2×10−5 Torr and the substrate temperature was 250 °C. The layers were post-annealed at temperature within the range 320–500 °C. The atomic force microscopy and pulsed force mode atomic force microscopy (PFM) investigations demonstrated that the effective surface reaches its maximum at 320 °C. At higher temperatures (360–500 °C) it decreased significantly to an approximately constant value. Measuring the local adhesion the difference between the adhesion forces at 320 and 360 °C was kept within the error range. Increasing the annealing temperatures, the adhesion force decreased over the investigated range. Post-annealing of the samples at 360 °C resulted in highly crystalline spherulites with lateral dimensions of several hundred micrometers. By optimizing the heating and cooling rate during the annealing the average dimension of spherulites increased and ringed structures were obtained. The PFM measurements showed that the adhesion force increased significantly compared to the similar samples without ringed structures. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the present paper, we report an experimental determination of adhesive and topographic characteristics of chemically modified surface of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) films. The surface chemistry was modified by ArF excimer laser irradiation in presence of triethylene-tetramine photoreagent. The applied laser fluence was varied in the range of 0.4–9 mJ/cm2, and the number of laser pulses incident on the same area was 1500. To detect the changes in the adhesive features of the treated Teflon samples, we measured receding contact angle for distilled water and adhesion strength, respectively. It was found that the receding contact angle decreased from 96° to 30–37° and the adhesion strength of two-component epoxy glue to the treated sample surface increased from 0.03 to 9 MPa in the applied laser fluence range. Additionally, it was demonstrated that the adhesion of human cells to the modified Teflon samples is far better than to the untreated ones. The contact mode and pulsed force mode atomic force microscopic investigations of the treated samples demonstrated that the measured effective contact area of the irradiated films does not differ significantly from that of the original films, but the derived adhesion force is stronger on the modified samples than on the untreated ones. Hence, the increased adhesion of the treated Teflon films is caused by the higher surface energy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]