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In the textile market industry, technical textiles are one of the fastest growing businesses. Part of that industry consists of textiles for medical and healthcare applications and are responsible for a continuous increase in its market potential [1]. Next to their need in hospital environ‐ ments, there is a growing demand in other sectors such as the food and hotel industry, due to stricter hygiene regulations. In most cases biomedical textile meets a well-defined set of requirements such as minimizing non-specific protein adsorption, drug delivery coatings or the presence of active functional coatings and most importantly excellent biocompatibility (blood-, tissue-or cyto-compatibility) [2]. In general there are very few materials meeting all these characteristics, while at the same time offering the needed structural and mechanical properties. Furthermore, depending on the application, the production process has to be costeffective and approved by local legislation.

In order to meet all these requirements, numerous modification techniques have been developed in the past [3-5]. Most of these techniques lead to the incorporation of extra/new functionalities and might lead to a change in surface free energy. For most biomedical applications, the preservation of material bulk properties such as elasticity, strength, ductility, structural integrity etc. is critical. For biomedical end-products, the use of solvents and chemicals based surface treatment techniques are reduced to a strict list approved by local legislation. Chemical-free techniques such as γ-radiation, UV treatments, corona discharges etc. have led to some excellent results in the field of tissue engineering [6, 7]. One of those solvent-free techniques that have been around for over a century, has more recently found its way into the biomedical field: non-thermal plasma technology.

Over time, it has extensively been proven that non-thermal plasma technology can profoundly change the surface properties of polymer films (PP, PET, PU, etc.) as well as material charac‐ teristics (adhesion, printability, dyeing etc.) of more complex substrates such as industrially

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produced textile [8-14]. Alongside the growing interest in tissue engineering and the booming of the electrospinning industry at the end of last century, non-thermal plasma technology found its way into the biomedical field. Today non-thermal plasma treatment can be consid‐ ered as a well-established technique for the surface treatment of (bio)materials.

Before the start of the 21st century, the majority of contributions to scientific literature was focussing on oxygen plasma treatments at low pressures and the corresponding response on cell adhesion, growth and proliferation. Although today there is still a steady stream of publications on these low pressure oxygen plasmas, there is a growing interest in atmospheric pressure plasma treatments as they offer a number of practical advantages. In the next chapter part, a detailed overview will be given on plasma technology in general and the different treatments possible. After that, the chapter will continue on the use of plasma technology for (bio)medical textiles, according to the application. At the end there will be a critical conclusion and a look forward to the possible future of plasma technology for the biomedical textile industry.
