AVS 53rd International Symposium
    Plasma Science and Technology Tuesday Sessions
       Session PS1-TuA

Paper PS1-TuA1
Formation of Gas Barrier Films for Polymer Sheets with Metal Ion Source

Tuesday, November 14, 2006, 2:00 pm, Room 2009

Session: Emerging Plasma Applications
Presenter: Y. Nishido, Chubu University, Japan
Authors: Y. Nishido, Chubu University, Japan
K. Nakamura, Chubu University, Japan
Correspondent: Click to Email
The polymer film has been widely used for various practical applications as a light and cheap material. However there is a problem of air leakage caused by penetration of gas molecules due to low dense film property. On the other hand, a surface modification has been utilized as useful technologies to add functionalities to the materials. In particular, plasma-based ion implantation and deposition (PBII&D) allows us to improve adhesion of thin films serving the functionalities with an underlying substrate. In this study, fundamental investigations were carried out for applications of a metal ion source to formation of gas barrier dense films with the surface modification technique. An 13.56 MHz inductively-coupled argon plasma was produced for a typical pressure of several tens mTorr, and sputtered copper atoms were mixed into the plasma. The ionization fraction of the copper atoms increased with the argon pressure, and reached over ~90 % for the pressure higher than ~60 mTorr. Thus such a high pressure operation enabled the plasma to act as a copper ion source. Copper films were deposited on polyimide sheets as gas barrier films. To evaluate gas barrier characteristics, the deposited films were pressurized with Helium gas in two atmospheric pressures, and transmitted gas flow rates of Helium were measured with a differentially-pumped quadrupole mass analyzer (QMA). The deposition of the copper thin films made the gas leakage of the polyimide sheets significantly suppressed, and their gas barrier property was absolutely improved with an increase in thickness of the copper films. Furthermore, high-pressure operation (>30 mTorr) was preferable to suppression of the gas leakage, suggesting that the formation of the gas barrier films with metal ions is effective for improvement of the gas barrier properties.