Method of grafting polymerizable monomers onto substrates

Abstract

The invention relates to the chemical bonding of a polymer or polymers onto a non-metallic substrate such as cellophane by contacting the substrate with a grafting solution that contains monomers, prepolymers, catalysts and possibly other ingredients, to obtain graft polymerization onto the substrate with intimate bonding of the polymer onto the substrate surface, and curing the polymer on the substrate by microwave, laser or ultrasonic energy. The invention provides a method where the bonding of the polymer is effected solely by physical rather than chemical means by eliminating the use of silver nitrate in the pretreatment step and using microwave, laser or ultrasonic energy to polymerize the monomers and binding the resulting polymer to the substrate, with the resulting grafted polymer having the same characteristics as if the bonding was effected chemically with silver ions or colloidal silver.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.