In order to achieve optimum adhesion even on low-energy surfaces, ROWO can subject the substrates to plasma modification.

A plasma system upstream of the coating station enables us to clean and activate the substrate surface inline directly before metallization. The low-pressure plasma is generated by a bipolar pulsed glow discharge. By varying the coupled power, the gases used and the web speed, the surface modification for the different substrate materials can be specifically optimized.

Compared to a corona discharge operated at atmospheric pressure, the low-pressure plasma has plasma particles with significantly higher energies that achieve a much more effective activation and cleaning of the substrate surface. While the corona pre-treatment is rapidly reduced, the pre-treatment in low-pressure plasma is stable over a much longer period of time. In addition, the low-pressure plasma is very homogeneous compared to the corona discharge, which leads to a more uniform treatment of the surfaces.

ROWO also offers this plasma pretreatment as contract pretreatment for customer’s own substrates.