Development of Advanced Polymeric Reflector for CSP Applications - Final Report

This project attempted to deposit extremely thick and dense protective barrier onto a mirror film stack with a PET substrate. The target thickness was very high for thin film products; particularly since large areas and long production lengths of film are needed to make the final product economic. The technical investigations in this project centered on maintaining a quality barrier (i.e. dense film) while evaporating alumina with a high deposition rate onto a low cost PET substrate. The project found that the proposed configuration, particularly direct ion bombardment, provides too narrow a solution space to effectively and economically produce the ASRM attempted. The initial project goals were met when depositing on a limited width and at a modest rate. However, expanding to wide deposition at aggressive deposition rates did not produce consistent film quality. Economic viability drives the process to maximize deposition rate. The current system configuration has a limiting upper rate threshold that does not appear economically viable. For future work, alternate approaches seem needed to address the challenges encountered in the scale-up phase of this project