Polymers are materials that are widely used for various purposes. They are used as stabilizers in liquid formulations for paints, coatings, detergents, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, personal care and food products. For liquid formulations interfacial tension together with interfacial rheology plays an important role when developing time and temperature stable formulations based on suspensions, emulsions or foams. Theta and Sigma series instruments from Attension enable determination of static surface and interfacial tensions, whereas Theta equipped with the pulsating drop module and BPA-800P provides information about dynamic properties of liquid interfaces and speed of adsorption, such as interfacial rheology and dynamic surface tension, respectively.
However, in many applications the polymer itself is a solid material and works as a support or as an active device. Because polymers are stable, chemically inert, have a low coefficient of friction and are easy to mold to any shape, they have become very popular in many applications. These include principle materials for car parts, plastic bags, home electronics, packaging materials, biomedical devices, low friction films and seals. Polymer materials often have the drawback of poor adhesion qualities e.g. poor stickiness towards another material because of their low surface free energy. The surface of polymer materials is therefore modified in order to achieve satisfactory adhesion for example for bonding, printing and painting applications. The main goal is to increase the surface free energy of the polymer material by introducing heteroatoms on the surface to increase adhesion and wettability. This can be done by treating the polymer with plasma, flame or ion beam bombardment. The efficiency of these treatments can easily be followed by contact angle and surface free energy measurements. Attension provides a range of user friendly instruments, the Theta and Sigma series, for surface energy determination and contact angle measurements.