Development of a Transparent Scratch Resistant Coating through Direct Oxidation of Al‐Coated Glass

Abstract

The authors develop a protective transparent coating of aluminum oxide through direct oxidation of aluminum-coated glass. Aluminum coatings are deposited on low-iron glass substrates using a physical deposition method and then oxidized at different temperatures. A uniform nano-porous structure with grain sizes of approximately 30-80 nm is observed. X-ray diffraction, TEM images, and EDX analysis indicate the formation of crystalline g-Al 2 O 3 , Si, and stishovite-SiO 2 as a result of interdiffusion. The samples treated at different temperatures have hardness values ranging from 5 to 9 H, which is within the desirable range for industrial scratch-resistant coatings. The optical transmission of around 75-85% at visible wavelengths makes the proposed technique useful for the design of protective transparent coatings. [**] The authors are grateful to the Physical Analysis Group at INM for the structural characterizations and to B. Heiland for TEM sample preparation. We thank Mr. R. Karos for performing XRD measurements and for valuable discussions. We also acknowledge the contributions of B. Schäfer for ellipsometry measurements. The authors would like to thank Prof. R. Bennewitz and Dr. A. Caron for the AFM measurements.

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