Patent ID: 7799389

Claim:
A method for depositing a polymer layer on a moving substrate for functionalizing a surface of the substrate, comprising the steps of: electrohydrodynamic spraying a polymerizable precursor towards the substrate in order to produce electrostatic deposition of electrically charged droplets of said precursor, causing excited species to interact with the droplets of the precursor sprayed on the substrate, thereby promoting polymerization reactions of said precursor, wherein the excited species are radical sites generated by a surface activation step of the substrate surface being carried out by a plasma generated in air, at atmospheric pressure under action of dielectric barrier discharge (DBD), and wherein the droplets are sprayed in a spraying area and the surface activation step is performed at an activation area located upstream, in a direction of the motion from the spraying area, so that spraying is performed on a portion of the substrate, the surface of which has radical sites that interact with the droplets of the precursor sprayed on the substrate so that covalent bonds are formed at the deposition/substrate interface.