Plasma Polymerized Coatings for Flexible Solar Cells Protection - FLEXPROTECT
Institution
CRP Henri Tudor
Autres partenaire(s)
Institut Simon Laplace, Toulouse (F)
Du : 01/01/2010
Au : 31/12/2011
Budget : 305 000,00€
Contact(s) :
Bardon Julien
Summary
Organic electronic components are sensitive to oxygen and water from the atmosphere. It is thus necessary to efficiently protect the active part of the component from the outside environment, thanks to an appropriate embedding. Silicon oxide like (SiOx) layers deposited by low pressure plasma processes are widely used to provide efficient gas barrier properties when deposited on films for industrial packaging (food and pharmaceutical).
However, these are batch processes which are not suitable for the treatment of large areas of polymer films. Atmospheric pressure plasma processing offers several advantages such as the ability to treat films on-line. Furthermore, such plasmas allow the deposition of a coating at low temperature (close to ambient), thus limiting thermal degradation of polymer films. Efficient gas barrier property of a layer is obtained when its intrinsic gas permeability is low and when the quantity of critical defects is reduced.
That is the reason why multilayers are generally used as barrier coatings, assuming that defects from one layer are stopped at the interface and do not propagate through next layer. In this work, monolayers based on different chemistries and deposited by means of atmospheric pressure dielectric barrier discharge (AP-DBD) are investigated as base material to develop subsequent multilayer coatings on poly(ethylene terephtalate) (PET). Organosilicon layers with a SiOx structure are deposited on PET films according to the process described by Gherardi and coworkers.
Other organosilicon layers with simultaneous incorporation of nanoclays during plasma polymerization are expected to provide good barrier properties. Moreover, fluorocarbon coatings deposited by means of AP-DBD are investigated for their interesting hydrophobic property. Improvement of quality (i.e. no defects) of SiOx layers, dispersion of nanoclays in the organosilicon matrix and hydrophobicity of fluorocarbon layers are targeted by tuning AP-DBD deposition parameters accordingly. When structure and barrier properties of these monolayers have been improved, multilayers are deposited, their barrier properties are tested, and their resistance is assessed by means of accelerated ageing tests