Plasma-based treatments of textiles for water repellency

First described by Langmuir in 1928, plasma, considered as the fourth aggregation state of matter, can be described as, ‘a mixture of partially ionised gases where the constituents are achieved by external energy addition’ (Blackburn, 2009). Plasmas are generally classified as hot/thermal and cold/nonthermal depending on the temperature of the plasma zone. A concise account of different technical plasma processes used for material processing can be found in Fig. 9.1.