Improved Coating Properties of Cu and TiO2 Coatings on PET Web Via High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering (HIPIMS) with Positive Voltage Reversal
(Room Room 104-A)
29 Apr 19
10:00 AM
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10:20 AM
Tracks:
WebTech Roll-to-Roll Coatings for High-End Applications
As industries such as wearable devices and flexible electronics develop, new technologies are required in order to deposit high quality coatings on insulating and temperature sensitive substrates. Roll to roll web coating is frequently used to deposit coatings on polymer and glass web. High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering (HIPIMS) has shown many advantages over conventional magnetron sputtering which is commonly used to deposit metals, metal nitrides and metal oxides on polymer web. With HIPIMS, a fraction of the target material will be ionized while the ion energy distribution function will shift to energies about 10 times greater than those for DC discharges. However, this increase in ionization and energy will give only modest changes in coating properties on an unbiased substrate. With the addition of a positive voltage reversal pulse adjacent to the negative HIPIMS sputtering pulse, these ions can be accelerated towards the substrate providing energy for film nucleation and densification. In this study, an industrial scale (330 mm wide web) web coater was used to deposit TiO2 and Cu coatings as well as other metal nitride and metal oxide coatings on PET at room temperature. Increases in film density and changes in grain size can be clearly seen compared to DC or pulsed DC sputtering. The effect on the index of refraction, extinction coefficient and barrier properties are also investigated.