Studies on atomic oxygen erosion resistance of deposited Mg-alloy coating on Kapton

Abstract In this paper, a continuous and uniform Mg-alloy coating was deposited by magnetron sputtering to protect flexible polyimide substrate from atomic oxygen (AO) erosion in the low earth orbit. AO exposure experiments indicated that the erosion yield of the as-deposited Mg-alloy coating was 8.897 × 10 −26  cm 3 atom −1 , about two orders of magnitude lower than that of blank polyimide. During AO exposure, a relatively compact and continuous thin MgO scale formed on the surface of the Mg-alloy coating, resulting in the enhanced AO erosion resistance of the polyimide with Mg-alloy coating.