Hard Coatings for the Production of Opthalmic and Automotive Glazing Plastic Parts - A Short Historical Review, the Current Status and Options for Industrial Applications

摘要

A first approach to hard coatings for polymer glazing parts like Polycarbonate (PC) was the application of lacquers: They became the standard production method in industry up to now. "Starting half a century ago vacuum- and plasma-based processes were developed to overcome the drawbacks of lacquers. First approaches were high vacuum thermal evaporation of SiO2 /SiO in modified standard batch coaters. A lot of projects, using different Plasma-CVD coating systems and plasma sources and mainly Hexamethyldisiloxane (HMDSO) as a precursor followed and are reviewed in a few examples. After this decades of work to implement an environmental-friendly, cost-effective production process a suitable solution is now available for applications, which do not need UV-protection: The PECVD process based on the linear scalable "PlasmaLine"-MW-Source allows high deposition rates of > 7 μm/min on large areas. The coatings fulfil all requirements for scratch resistance. To adapt additional features, e.g. metallization, AR or UV-protection for outdoor applications well known PVD processes - e.g. sputtering of ZnO or ZnO:S are available and have at least to be fit together to present a suitable demonstrator. The summarized historical experience together with some new experimental results will be able to add these currently missing features.