Physico-chemical and surface properties of air plasma treated PVDF/PMMA/Attapulgite/hexagonal-Boron Nitride blends

Surface morphology, contact angle and roughness analysis of PVDF/PMMA/AT:BN blends before and after air plasma treatment. [Display omitted] •Polymer blends of PVDF/PMMA/Attapulgite/hexagonal-Boron Nitride were prepared.•The air plasma treatment was done to modify the surface property of the blends.•The changes due to air plasma treatment were studied by XPS analysis.•Surface and physico-chemical properties were explored in detail.•This study can be helpful to develop advanced functional coatings. In our present study, we synthesized and characterized a series of Poly (vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF)/Poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) polymer blends modified by the admixtures of attapulgite clay (AT) and hexagonal-Boron Nitride (h-BN) by weight ratio. The surface of the modified polymer blends was treated with air plasma. The samples were further characterized by polarizing optical microscopy (POM), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) to visualize and understand the morphology of the surfaces before and after the plasma treatment. The air plasma induced an alteration in the surface chemical compositions, functional groups and the elemental ratio which was analyzed in detail by Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS). The contact angle measurements were performed to envisage the wetting property of the untreated and plasma treated surfaces and their physical and chemical properties were correlated to address the nature of the surfaces. This study can be helpful to develop, future protective barriers and advanced functional surface coatings.