Surface Treatment – From History to Modern Customized Solutions and Their Environmental Footprint Webinar

Surface treatment technologies are crucial in flexible packaging and converting, ensuring reliable adhesion and print quality across diverse substrates. This presentation reviews key activation methods with a focus on extrusion coating, combining historical context with current industrial practice.

We start with the fundamentals of surface oxidation, outlining surface energy and the mechanisms that govern it. The evolution of ozone treatment and its integration into extrusion lines will be presented, followed by corona treatment, whose technological advances have made it the industry standard. The underlying discharge processes will be explained to show how they enhance wettability and functional performance.

Flame treatment will then be addressed, from its role in treating web-based substrates to the broad application potential it offers.

Finally, we place these technologies in the context of sustainability. Energy demand, CO₂ footprint, and processing costs will be compared, highlighting strategies to balance performance with environmental responsibility. The aim is to demonstrate how optimized surface treatment can drive both technical efficiency and sustainable progress in packaging production.

Keywords: 

Surface treatment, Corona treatment, ozone treatment, flame treatment, wettability, oxidation, surface activation

Who Should Attend: 

Job Role:

• General Manager
• Process Engineer
• Managing Director
• Purchasing Manager
• Sales Manager
• Product Manager

Company:

• Any company that produces, converts or prints on web-based materials  

Learning Outcomes: 

1. Understand the fundamentals of surface activation / treatment.
2. Select the right surface treatment method fitting to their specific production process.

Florian Brehmer started his career at AFS, Germany, in 2001 in parallel to high school and later the university studies, working in production and R&D. He obtained his university diploma in physics in 2010 with a thesis on plasma surface treatment of polymers. In 2015, he received his PhD in applied physics working on plasma diagnostics at the Technical University of Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

Starting 2014, Florian was permanently employed at AFS, working in R&D, and in parallel at AFS’ daughter company SOFTAL, having a management position. From 2017 on, he was Technical Director in both companies, and since 2021 he is Managing Director in both companies.