Excellent organic/inorganic transparent thin film moisture barrier entirely made by hot wire CVD at 100 °C

Abstract

We present a silicon nitride/polymer hybrid multilayer moisture barrier for flexible electronics made entirely by hot wire chemical vapor deposition (HWCVD) at substrate temperatures below 100 °C. Using the initiated CVD (iCVD) variant of HWCVD for the polymer layers, these can be extremely thin, while efficiently decoupling the defects in consecutive inorganic layers. Although a single layer of low temperature SiNx is more prone to have pinholes than its state‐of‐the‐art high temperature equivalent, we have achieved a simple three‐layer structure consisting of two low‐temperature SiNx layers with a polymer layer in between, which is pinhole free and shows a water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) as low as 5 × 10–6 g/m2/day at a temperature of 60 °C and a relative humidity of 90%. This WVTR is low enough for organic devices. (© 2012 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Permeation barrier performance of Hot Wire-CVD grown silicon-nitride films treated by argon plasma

“…The encapsulation of such devices is considered as a crucial issue to be solved in order to enable their long term stability and deployment. Instead of glass as an encapsulation protection, more and more attention has been paid to the development of high-quality inorganic films or alternating organic and inorganic films due to their flexibility and their high barrier performance [1,2].…”

Chemical Vapor Deposition for Solvent‐Free Polymerization at Surfaces

“…The multilayers can be easily deposited from the vapor phase because CVD techniques can be coupled to deposit inorganic (SiO x , SiN x ) and polymer layers (acrylate, silicone) sequentially. Excellent barrier properties were obtained from multilayers deposited by hotwire CVD coupled with iCVD [54][55][56][57][58] Figure 3 . a) Deposition of iPECVD polymer coating inside silicon wafer trenches.…”

Using hot wire and initiated chemical vapor deposition for gas barrier thin film encapsulation

“…The continuous HWCVD process can easily be implemented in a roll-to-roll or in-line process and since the wires provide a linear source of radicals, the deposited layers are homogenous in two dimensions, when the substrate is moved perpendicular to the wires [8]. Giving an overview of results demonstrated in the field of thin film gas barriers using HWCVD as well as iCVD, for inorganic and respectively organic coatings, this paper will conclude by addressing our super barrier results combining HWCVD deposited SiN x with iCVD deposited poly(glycidyl methacrylate) (PGMA) [9] and explaining these in terms of the general strength of its concept.…”