ABSTRACT
Transparent ceramic thin layers deposited on poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) substrate film are increasingly used as transparent electrodes for electronic devices, and as gas barrier layers for food and medical device packaging. Silicon oxide (SiOx) and aluminum oxide (AlOx) compounds are the most popular materials for transparent gas barrier layers and many researchers have investigated as to how to produce these layers and have characterized them. Moreover, indium tin oxide (ITO) [1] and titanium oxide (TiOx) [2] were also used for the transparent gas barrier layers. These transparent gas barrier layers have been deposited onto
polymer substrate films by various methods such as the sol-gel method [3], physical vapor deposition (PVD) [4], electron beam evaporation [5], plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PE-CVD) [6, 7], reactive sputtering [8-10], electron beam evaporation [11] and laser-assisted-CVD [12]. PET film is most popularly used as substrate for transparent gas barrier layers, because it has excellent transparency, thermal and chemical stability, electrical properties, optical properties and gas barrier properties. There are only a few other polymers used as substrate.
