4.2 Article

Optimization of slot-coating processes: minimizing the amplitude of film-thickness oscillation

Journal

JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING MATHEMATICS
Volume 71, Issue 1, Pages 97-108

Publisher

SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s10665-010-9440-6

Keywords

Finite-element method; Free-surface flow; Optimization; Slot coating; Transient response

Funding

  1. Brazilian Department of Education (CAPES)
  2. Brazilian Research Council (CNPq)
  3. 3M Company

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Slot coating is one of the most common coating methods for high-precision coatings. The flow limits of steady-state operation have been extensively analyzed in the literature. However, even the best-designed slot-coating operations are subjected to small oscillations on process conditions, such as flow rate, vacuum pressure and gap fluctuations. These time-dependent events lead to thickness variations on the deposited liquid layer that may be unacceptable for product performance. Therefore, the design of slot-coating processes, e.g. the specification of process conditions and die geometry, has to take into account not only the behavior of steady-state flow but also how the flow responds to small periodic disturbances. The process parameters should be such that the film-thickness oscillation is minimized. In this study, coating-thickness variations related to an ongoing oscillation of the coating gap is studied for different process parameters and frequency of the perturbation by solving the transient Navier-Stokes equations with appropriate boundary conditions for free-surface flow. The amplitude of the deposited film-thickness oscillation is used as the objective function of a bound-constrained optimization algorithm. The results show that at a fixed web speed and wet thickness, the film-thickness amplitude may be reduced by a factor of 4 by adjusting other process parameters.

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