Improved glass bonding with plasma treatment

Abstract

Bonding of automotive glass is generally performed with 1C PUR adhesive on a primed ceramic frit or naked glass surface. The aim of this research was to replace the chemistry of the primer with an atmospheric pressure plasma treatment (APPT) with compressed air for cleaning and activation directly before bonding. Characterization of the glass surface was performed with surface energy through contact angle, XPS, TOF-SIMS and adhesive peel bead test. The results show that APPT treatment can clean the surface, improve the wetting, improve the bonding but reduce the number of non bridging oxygen for the adhesive to bond to. The highest measured spot temperature of the glass during APPT was measured up to 270 °C, but the temperature was depending on process parameters. A reduction in non bridging oxygen was also seen during heating of the reference glass at 100 °C. A further reaction was seen when measured after a 550 °C heating. A modified APPT treatment with deionized water as precursor was used. The results show that the APPT with water does not lower the level of non bridging oxygen and the bonding was further improved.