High performance barrier films prevent the passage of atmospheric oxygen and moisture,
along with other species such as carbon dioxide and ethylene, to/from the materials and
devices they protect. The analytical equipment to qualify such barrier films is a growth market
with a CAGR of >20% and projected to be >$150 million by 2020. The barrier film market
divides between the established speciality packaging market for foods and pharmaceutical etc.
at $1.5 billion, growing at GDP rates +5% and the emerging high growth ultra high
performance barrier layers required by the plastic electronics market with a CAGR of 80%
and projected to be $3 billion by 2020. To achieve the required device lifetimes of =10 years,
barrier layers with moisture permeation of less than 10 6 g/m2/day H2O are required – these
permeation rates are currently beyond that measureable with commercially available
instrumentation by approximately a factor of 100! This severely limits the development of
ultra high performance barrier films for these markets!
This project will demonstrate an instrument that can measure permeation rates to the required
levels but in a timescale of days rather than weeks enabling the rapid development of ultra
high performance barrier layers and underpinning the growth of the emerging plastic
electronics markets. The technique is based on a high sensitivity mass spectrometer detector
and utilises vacuum and the use of low abundance naturally occurring stable isotopes e.g.
D2O, to drive down interfering background levels by many orders of magnitude. It is
anticipated that moisture permeation rates of less than 10 7 g/m2/day H2O will be achieved.
The unique ability of a mass spectrometer detector to monitor multiple species simultaneously
allows simultaneous permeation measurements of other species as required by the speciality
packaging industries in the same instrument; this reduces the quantity of equipment needed
and gives a significant competitive advantage.