Excellent organic/inorganic transparent thin film moisture barrier entirely made by hot wire CVD at 100 °C

We present a silicon nitride/polymer hybrid multilayer moisture barrier for flexible electronics made entirely by hot wire chemical vapor deposition (HWCVD) at substrate temperatures below 100 °C. Using the initiated CVD (iCVD) variant of HWCVD for the polymer layers, these can be extremely thin, while efficiently decoupling the defects in consecutive inorganic layers. Although a single layer of low temperature SiNx is more prone to have pinholes than its state-of-the-art high temperature equivalent, we have achieved a simple three-layer structure consisting of two low-temperature SiNx layers with a polymer layer in between, which is pinhole free and shows a water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) as low as 5 × 10–6 g/m2/day at a temperature of 60 °C and a relative humidity of 90%. This WVTR is low enough for organic devices. (© 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)