We report final results from Phase II (Technology Development) of a multi-year project on the protection of polymeric materials in the low Earth orbit (LEO) environment, which has been pursued under the Canadian Space Agency's STEAR 6 program. The approach that evolved from Phase I (Feasibility Study) consists of (a) a thin (< 0.5 μm) plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposited (PECVD) SiO_2 coating as the primary protection, together with (b) surface fluorinating the underlying polymer. This combined protection is applied to full-scale spacecraft components such as graphite-epoxy composite struts and Kapton~r thermal blankets. Pilot-scale PECVD reactors, capable of depositing uniform, defect-free SiO_2 coatings, have been developed to coat both types of components; for the case of the flexible substrate material, technology transfer to an existing 100 cm wide PECVD production roll-coater is unproblematic.
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