Adhesion promotion techniques for coating of polymer films

Adhesion of vacuum deposited thin films on polymeric films is a critical parameter for many applications and products. Therefore, during the last years, several plasma pre-treatment techniques have been developed to address this issue. However, it has been learned over the years that the pre-treatment parameters have to be well matched to the substrate and coating conditions. In this paper we describe the different demands on a plasma source with regard to the coating speed (evaporation, sputtering) used. Appropriate solutions and methods have been evaluated considering low investment costs for a hardware upgrade. In some cases the intelligent usage of already existing equipment can be already sufficient.