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

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 degrees 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 x 106 g/m2/day at a temperature of 60 degrees C and a relative humidity of 90%. This WVTR is low enough for organic devices. (C) 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)