Experimental comparison of high-performance water vapor permeation measurement methods

The requirement for evaluating high performance barrier layers with water vapor transmission rates (WVTR) far below 10−3 g/m2 d has been sparked by the growing application of flexible and organic electronics. While several highly sensitive WVTR-measurement techniques are described in the literature, their accuracy and comparability has not yet been tested. There is an absence of direct comparison of these methods. With a growing body of literature referring to different coating and barrier technologies (often under different testing conditions), it is extremely difficult to gather a coherent picture both of the performance of the materials studied and the permeation measurement methods used. In order to clarify these points we report on independent WVTR measurements of the same batch of a high performance barrier film under two sets of conditions in several laboratories with different state-of the-art methods. These methods also include several calcium test set-ups. The results showed that, while some differences are present, there is a remarkable level of agreement between the measurement methods even prior to harmonization.