This award will support collaborative research in polymer materials between Professor Hirotsugu Yasuda, University of Missouri-Rolla and Dr. Carl-Gustav Golander, Surface Chemistry Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. The interactions between solid surfaces can be directly measured as the force acting between two surfaces, and the data obtained by such measurements provide very important information pertinent to many applications of materials in which surface plays a crucially important role. Heretofore the measurement has been limited to freshly cleaved mica surface and modified surfaces of mica. Because of the inertness of the mica surface, the modifications of the surface is rather limited to thin film applications, such as by adsorption and Langmuir-Blodgett deposition techniques. In order to broaden the scope of the surface force measurement, it is intended in this joint project to utilize the ultra-thin film deposition technique known as plasma polymerization, which provides new kinds of surfaces with improved adhesion characteristics. Plasma polymers have surface characteristics of low mobility due to the absence of long chain segments, which are significantly different from those of conventional polymers with highly mobile macromolecules. Plasma polymers are believed to be ideally suited for the study of surface forces. The Swedish Institute for Surface Chemistry has one of the most productive groups working in the area of surface force measurements. In addition, the surface force measuring apparatus developed by J.N. Israelachvili has been installed since 1983 in this Swedish institute. Professor Yasuda has extensive experience in plasma polymerization and its application in surface modifications. He will gain an opportunity to investigate surfaces of plasma deposited polymeric materials with the help of Swedish expertise in surface chemistry.
