ABSTRACT
For over 25 years, the thermal evaporation of aluminum onto thin polymeric webs, such as polyester (PET) and polypropylene (PP), has generated large volumes of barrier packing films, decorative films, capacitor films, and some window films. The experience of wide web handling was combined with deposition technologies, such as electron beam evaporation, magnetron sputtering, and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition, to create a large number of new, exciting, coating materials, including oxides and nitrides of most elements. More particularly, combinations of these coating layers into a complex coating stack led to new products, such as low emissivity, solar heat reflecting, architectural glazing films, electrochromic devices, and high-performance optical reflectors. With these technologies, unique coating characteristics can be realized, e.g., transparent electrodes, flexible glassy barriers for moisture and gases, and amorphous soft magnetic materials for security devices.
