4.7 Article

High-performance water vapor barriers via amorphous alumina-polycrystalline zinc oxide hybrids with a self-wrinkling morphology

Journal

SURFACE & COATINGS TECHNOLOGY
Volume 447, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA
DOI: 10.1016/j.surfcoat.2022.128834

Keywords

Al2O3-ZnO; Self-wrinkles; Co-sputtering; WVTR; Barrier films; PET

Funding

  1. Guangdong Province Nature Science Funding [NSF] [2022A1515010213]
  2. Guangdong University Key Platform [2021GCZX009]

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This study presents a thin film barrier with a self-wrinkling morphology, which is composed of composites of amorphous alumina and polycrystalline zinc oxide. The experimental results show that the composite structure can significantly improve the water-resistance performance, and the self-wrinkling morphology further enhances the barrier property.
This work presents a materially and structurally designed barrier thin film with a self-wrinkling morphology, which consists of composites of amorphous alumina (a-Al2O3) and polycrystalline zinc oxide (ZnO). The pure ZnO, Al2O3 films, and Al2O3-ZnO composited film are deposited on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) by magnetron co-sputtering at room temperature. The water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) for the composited film with about 30 % ratio of Al2O3 to ZnO is down to 0.026 g.m(-2).day(-1) from 1.184 g.m(-2).day(-1) of pure ZnO film at 38 ?C/90 % RH, indicating that the nanocomposite structure of amorphous Al2O3 and crystalline ZnO can significantly improve the water-resistance performance. Theoretical calculations demonstrate that the amorphous Al2O3 can dramatically suppress the defect fraction within ZnO from 4.65 % to 0.08 %. Furthermore, a self-wrinkling morphology with Al2O3-ZnO composited film deposited on PET/acrylic is designed to have the WVTR value as low as 1.30 x 10(-3) g.m(-2).day(-1). Due to the stress release when forming micro-scale wrinkles, the more smooth and dense Al2O3-ZnO composited film can markedly sharpen up the barrier property. The low WVTR barriers via amorphous and crystalline hybrid composites with self-wrinkling morphology by magnetron sputtering potentially serve as a low-cost and large-scale production path for electronics encapsulation as compared to atomic layer deposition (ALD) and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD).

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