Preventive Surface Treatment of Silicone Materials for Outgassing and Contamination Reduction in Space Application

Contaminating films on spacecraft sensitive materials surfaces in many cases consist primarily of products resulting from the interaction of atomic oxygen with silicones. Necessity of a drastic reduction of the outgassing of volatiles and the following contamination has thus become a challenging problem. The effective surface conversion of space related organosilicone materials to oxide-based protective sub-surface layers under ground-based OpenAirTM plasma pre-treatment has been researched. Oxygen plasma asher testing and complementary surface analysis techniques have been used to assess the surface composition, bounding states and atomic oxygen resistance of the treated materials. It was shown that the application of this approach may essentially simplify the technological development to reduce or prevent contamination caused by silicone-coated space materials and structures.