**3. Conclusion**

Oxygen plasma treatment is a suitable method to improve the quality of cellulose materials. The drastically improvement in sorption capacity far outweigh the minor changes in mechanical properties; while no changes in morphology was observed. Ageing of plasma activation effect was insignificant present within a few days concerning hydrophilicity and tensile properties. Since oxygen plasma contains a variety of different reactive particles, the proper choice of plasma parameters is the key issue. Plasma containing rather large concentration of charged particles is better to be avoided since it usually leads to excessive thermal effects and thus degradation of the material. The available energy dissipated on the cellulose surface at the interaction between charged particles and solid material is simply too large to assure for modification of cellulose material at low temperature. Instead of moderately ionised plasma it is better to use extremely weekly ionised plasma with a large density of neutral reactive particles. The best species in term of reasonable chemical reactivity and low thermal load are neutral oxygen atoms in the ground state. Plasma rich with these particles, but poor in charged particles, is created using an electrodeless high frequency discharge. The absence of electrodes in such discharges is favourable since it prevents substantial drain of neutral oxygen atoms by heterogeneous surface recombination. Best materials for construction of a suitable plasma reactor are different glasses and some ceramics. The plasma facing components should be smooth and should not allow for chemisorption of neutral oxygen atoms. If this requirements are fulfilled the dissociation fraction of oxygen molecules in gaseous plasma at pressures up to several mbar, exceeds the ionisation fraction for at least five orders of magnitudes. Such plasma is therefore safe to use since it does not lead to excessive exothermic reactions and thus thermal degradation of treated materials. Based on that, plasma treatment is advantage surface activation procedure in order to obtain super-hydrophilic matric, used as a potential layer in wound dressings.

Plasma Induced Hydrophilic Cellulose Wound Dressing 189

This work was supported by the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology of

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