PVD coating of plastic webs and sheets with high rates on large areas

For many product applications, plastic material needs to be coated with transparent oxide layers to obtain the required properties like permeation barrier, abrasion resistance, anti-reflection and defined optical transmission for example. First of all, outstanding properties of coated material are needed in comparison to competitive technologies. Beyond this, acceptable costs for the market are decisive for the introduction of PVD technologies into production. This paper gives an overview of the great variety of applications. position rate has a strong influence on coating cost: the higher the rates, the lower the cost.High rates, especially for deposition of oxides, are often considered as being linked to poor layer quality. Plasma activation of vapor is one method to obtain high rates and acceptable properties. Hollow cathode activated deposition process (HAD) and pulsed magnetron sputtering (PMS) will be explained. Results concerning layer properties will be depicted. An outlook to the future will be derived.