Selective Plasma Etching of Polymer-Metal Mesh Foil in Large-Area Hydrogen Atmospheric Pressure Plasma
2020
We present a novel method of surface processing of complex
polymer-metal composite substrates. Atmospheric-pressure plasma
etching in pure H2, N2, H2/N2 and air plasmas was used to
fabricate flexible transparent composite poly(methyl
methacrylate) (PMMA)-based polymer film/Ag-coated Cu metal wire
mesh substrates with conductive connection sites by the
selective removal of the thin (~10–100 nm) surface PMMA layer.
To mimic large-area roll-to-roll processing, we used an
advanced alumina-based concavely curved electrode generating a
thin and high-power density cold plasma layer by the diffuse
coplanar surface barrier discharge. A short 1 s exposure to
pure hydrogen plasma, led to successful highly-selective
etching of the surface PMMA film without any destruction of the
Ag-coated Cu metal wires embedded in the PMMA polymer. On the
other hand, the use of ambient air, pure nitrogen and H2/N2
plasmas resulted in undesired degradation both of the polymer
and the metal wires surfaces. Since it was found that the
etching efficiency strongly depends on the process parameters,
such as treatment time and the distance from the electrode
surface, we studied the effect and performance of these
parameters.
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
17
References
2
Citations
NaN
KQI