Development of Plasma Polymerised SiOx Barriers on Polymer Films for Food Packaging Applications

Abstract

Expensive polymer food packaging consisting of multilayer systems of different polymers will be increasingly replaced by cheap homopolymeric materials. Low‐pressure plasma deposition of SiOx layers provides a promising alternative to achieve barrier properties on homopolymeric materials directly comparable to those of multilayer polymer packaging. Oxygen and HMDSO were applied for depositing SiOx layers on poly(propylene) (PP) and polyethyleneterephthalate (PET) foil samples by using two different low‐pressure microwave plasma sources. Significant improvements of the barrier properties were achieved in the first experiments, e.g. the oxygen permeability could be reduced by a factor of 65.

Plasma Polymer Deposition and Coatings on Polymers

“…In this way, dense SiO x films with good barrier properties could be achieved for high O 2 /HMDSO ratios (54). Too high energy densities (or more precisely, momentum densities), however, induce high internal stresses that cause cracks and reduced barrier properties (53).…”

Inhibition of Interfacial Oxidative Degradation During SiOxPlasma Polymer Barrier Film Deposition on Model Organic Substrates

“…Inhibition of the transport of volatiles, such as O 2 , H 2 O and CO 2 , is a necessity to assure satisfactory performance of polymeric products in the food and pharmaceutical packaging industries, as well as in protection of organic light‐emitting devices . Especially for packaging applications, it is desired to have thin transpartent coatings that can replace traditional metal barrier layers, while maintaining target permeability values for consumer products to ensure the necessary shelf‐life . Plasma‐enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PE‐CVD) of glass‐like silicon‐based ultrathin coatings is a widespread technique to be used in industrial production lines due to its several advantages, such as applicability to complex shapes, low cost and high deposition rate .…”

Surface Processing Using Cold Atmospheric Pressure Plasmas

“…Plasma deposited SiO 2 films exhibit unique properties, such as low gas and moisture permeability at very low thicknesses (<20 nm), thus producing effective barrier layers that could be applied to food or pharmaceutical packaging (48) or as anticorrosion treatments (49). SiO 2 layers also have applications as hard coatings on soft substrates and coatings for ophthalmic lenses creating transparent antiscratch coatings, and more recently they have shown promising results in the area of biomaterials engineering with respect to protein adsorption (50).…”