Applied Surface Science, Vol.448, 88-94, 2018
The enhanced abrasion resistance of an anti-fingerprint coating on chrome-plated brass substrate by integrating sputtering and atmospheric pressure plasma jet technologies
We demonstrate the procedure of fabricating an anti-fingerprint coating on plated-Cr/brass substrates by the combination of two processes: (1) Sputtering and (2) Atmospheric pressure plasma jet (APPJ). APPJ surface treatment on sputtered-SiOx glue layer on plated-Cr/brass substrate is conducted to improve its surface property to be hydrophilic for chemical bonding with an anti-fingerprint agent (AF-001). The results show that the surface energy of original substrate are evolving from 44.2 mN/m to 60.8 mN/m and 76.9 mN/m for the sputtered-SiOx film and APPJ-treated SiOx film, respectively. Subsequently, the spin-coating process using a commercialnt (AF-001 agent for the prepared sample is implemented. The hydrophobicity of anti-fingerprint characteristics for all of the samples with a quite low surface energy around 10.5 mN/m are obtained. For practical evaluation of abrasion behavior, a good abrasion resistance of AF/APPJ-treated SiOx/plated-Cr/brass sample under 1000 g-steel wood loading is evidently obtained from the slow variation of water contact angle value. The results demonstrate that the feasibility of integrating APPJ process on the sputtered-SiOx film for improving the surface properties of chrome-plated brass substrate is practically achieved. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords:Hydrophobicity;Chrome-plated brass;Atmospheric pressure plasma jet;Anti-fingerprint coating;Abrasion resistance