Fast enhancement on hydrophobicity of poplar wood surface using low-pressure dielectric barrier discharges (DBD) plasma

Highlights: • Plasma working under low pressure is easy to realize industrialization. • Enhancing process finished within 75 s. • Plasma treatment leads to the increase in equilibrium contact angle by 330%. • Tinfoil film with simple chemical structure was used to reveal the mechanism. - Abstract: The hydrophilicity of woody products leads to deformation and cracks, which greatly limits its applications. Low-pressure dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma using hexamethyldisiloxane was applied in poplar wood surface to enhance the hydrophobicity. The chemical properties, micro-morphology, and contact angles of poplar wood surface before and after plasma treatment were investigated by attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive analysis of X-ray (SEM-EDX), atomic force microscopy (AFM), and optical contact angle measurement (OCA). Moreover, tinfoil film was used as the base to reveal the enhancement mechanism. The results showed that hexamethyldisiloxane monomer is first broken into several fragments with active sites and hydrophobic chemical groups. Meanwhile, plasma treatment results in the formation of free radicals and active sites in the poplar wood surface. Then, the fragments are reacted with free radicals and incorporated into the active sites to form a network structure based on the linkages of Si-O-Si and Si−O−C. Plasma treatment also leads to the formation of acicular nano-structure in poplar wood surface. These facts synergistically enhance the hydrophobicity of poplar wood surface, demonstrating the dramatically increase in the equilibrium contact angle by 330%.