A new process to rapidly and cheaply
coat plastic sheet panels and foils with a scratch-proof
glassy layer to prevent them from frequent scratches
has been developed by German scientists. Quartz glass
is evaporated and then deposited on the plastic surface
in the method developed at Fraunhofer Institute for
Electron Beam and Plasma Technology (FEP) Dresden.
Application of intensive quartz glass plasma during
evaporation results in coatings of extreme hardness
and resilience, reports Fraunhofer Gesselschaft Research
News. The system can coat foils or sheets with a width
of up to 40 centimeters, but in principle coating
widths of several meters are quite possible.
The coating speed with plasma-activated
high-rate electron beam evaporation is around 100
times greater than with other vacuum coating processes
- applying a thickness of up to a micrometer per second.
Clear and hard glass surfaces of this kind open up
new potential applications for plastics - in car windows
and headlamps, solar collectors, floor coverings and
wall panels. A thin surface coating only six micrometers
in depth makes the plastic as wear-resistant as normal
glass. The high speed of the process substantially
reduces costs - and the greater the volume of plastic
coated, the less expensive the job becomes.
