Surface and Coatings Technology 111 (1999) 287–296

Current Industrial Practice

Better aluminium mirrors by integrating plasma pretreatment, sputtering,
and plasma polymerization for large-scale car headlight productionk
H. Grünwald a,*, R. Adam a, J. Bartella a, M. Jung a, W. Dicken a, S. Kunkel a, K. Nauenburg a,
T. Gebele a, S. Mitzlaff a, G. Ickes a, U. Patz a, J. Snyder b
a Leybold Systems GmbH, Wilhelm-Rohn-Str. 25, D-63450 Hanau, Germany
b Leybold Technologies Inc., Enfield, CT 06082, USA

Received 2 March 1998; accepted 25 September 1998

Abstract

The move to abandon lacquering in today’s car manufacture has revealed new challenges at the plastic interface, especially
reduced adhesion of the coating and outgassing (mainly water) that can affect the aluminium quality. Under the increased
temperatures inside head and fog lights, further outgassing often leads to hazy appearance of the reflector or the front lens by
droplet condensation.
These problems can be solved by a process sequence that includes some oxidizing plasma pre-treatment that ensures good
bonding of the aluminium to the plastic and also enhances desorption of water. In addition, some plasma-polymerized adhesion-
promoting base coat (if required, also desorption blocking) may be deposited. After aluminium deposition, first a corrosion
protective layer and finally, a hydrophilic coating that suppresses hazing effects by spreading out any condensing vapours to some
optically neutral layer are deposited. © 1999 Published by Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Aluminium mirrors; Car headlights; Plasma treatment

1. Introduction evaporation systems. Because the batches are small and

1.1. Challenge no. 1: production performance
Metal sputter coaters such as the ‘‘DynaMet’’ family
[1,2] have found very good acceptance among car
lighting manufacturers because of their short cycle time
(35–45 s) that allows for production synchronized with
the other equipment. For example, the cycle time of an
injection moulding machine is approximately 1 min for
one pair of reflectors with a typical size. This means
that a ‘‘DynaMet 4V’’ (Figs. 1 and 2) receiving two
such pairs per batch with a cycle time of 36 s may coat
the output of up to four injection moulding machines
within the same time. The productivity of such a coating
plant equals that of about three large 2 m diameter
* Corresponding author: Tel: +49 61 813 41417;
Fax: +49 61 813 41850.
k Presented at the ICMCTF’98 Conference, San Diego, CA, USA,
April 1998.
no movement of the parts during coating is required,
the fixtures are also small and easy to manufacture,
store and maintain. All this reduces the tooling cost
significantly. One of these frame-like fixtures is loaded
and unloaded into the coating plant per batch. This can
be done by an automatic mechanism to the advantage
of further reduced process time. The process parameters
for each batch are loaded into the process control by
automatic read-out of a code on each fixture. So, these
machines offer total flexibility for random product mix.
This means that very different parts can be coated on
demand in lots as small as one frame without any
circumstances such as remounting large fixturing planets
of large batch evaporation coaters or exchanging process
recipes in the process control manually. Loading of the
parts into the fixtures is also comparatively easy and
may be done by robot systems. As a result, the handling
(transporting, storing and loading/unloading the parts)
induced portion of scrap could be dramatically reduced
at different manufacturer’s sites. All this resulted in a
significant reduction of production cost per piece.

0257-8972/99/$ – see front matter © 1999 Published by Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.
PII S 02 5 7 -8 9 7 2 ( 9 8 ) 0 0 71 8 - X
288 H. Grünwald et al. / Surface and Coatings Technology 111 (1999) 287–296
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of materials flow through the ‘‘DynaMet 4V’’.
Fig. 2. High volume reflector coating system ‘‘DynaMet 4V’’ with
autoloader.
1.2. Challenge no. 2: quality of most demanding parts
Designers of car lighting seem to be willing to make
excessive use of all opportunities that today’s plastic
technology is offering: Some reflector parts, especially
of head lights, are getting larger to even extreme sizes
being not only wide but also deep. Other shapes (mainly
tail lights) tend to be very complex with unfavourably
high aspect ratios (depth to width) or have even recesses
to be coated. This makes it difficult to maintain high
aluminium quality on all reflecting areas. At the other
extreme, fog lights remain small but are fitted with high
power lamps with a high heat impact onto all plastic
parts involved. Thermosetting resins such as BMC
(‘‘bulk moulded compound’’) and high heat thermoplas-
tics can withstand the resulting high temperature but
tend to outgas more or less volatile materials that
condense on the cooler areas within the reflector leading
to a hazy appearance that ruins the optical perfor-
mance there.
The feasibility of highly polished moulds and the need
for further savings are driving forces for the abandon-
ment of lacquering, which is no longer desirable because
of its expense and the quality problems involved. This
confronts the coating shops with all the problems inher-
ent to plastic parts that have been masked by the
lacquer: outgassing from the resin, poor adhesion of the
coating, and poorly defined, poorly reproducible and
often inhomogeneous surfaces.
To complete the trouble for the coaters, the front
lenses are tending to loose their optical function more
and more, degenerating to clear cover panes that easily
reveal any failure in optical performance to even the
non-trained viewer. So, there is no escape from produc-
ing very high quality! In this paper, we report the
progress that we have achieved with the sputter coaters
of the ‘‘DynaMet’’ family in facing the above problems.
 H. Grünwald et al. / Surface and Coatings Technology 111 (1999) 287–296 289

2. Experimental

The outgassing rate of a variety of typical plastics,

mainly thermoplastics such as ABS and polycarbonate
(PC ) for car lighting applications, was determined by
measuring pressure p over time t. In order to determine
short time desorption, a special set-up was developed
for dynamic measurement, i.e. under known and con-
stant pumping speed S. For this purpose, the pumping
speed of a 1000 l s−1 turbomolecular pump was throttled
by a comparatively small aperture. The inner surfaces
of the stainless steel measuring chamber are electropoli-
shed to minimize the desorption from the walls. The
desorption rate was calculated from Q∞=Sp(t).
The outgassing substances from ABS reflector materi-
als were investigated by mass spectrometry using a
commercial Leybold SNMS instrument (INA-3) fitted
with a quadrupole mass spectrometer (Balzers QMS
511) and an r.f. plasma source for ionization of gas
species [3]. The samples were kept in the load lock until
a pressure of 5×10−4 Pa was reached and then transfer-
red into the analysis chamber where the mass spectra
were immediately taken over 180 s. Direct impact of the
plasma that could influence the outgassing by heating
or radiation effects was prevented by shielding the Fig. 3. Dependence of colour difference and luminosity of sputtered
samples with aluminium foil. Al layers on background pressure of HMDSO and water, respectively
The vacuum requirements for the Al sputtering were at fixed power density (a, top) and power density at the cathode for
fixed base pressures (b, bottom).
investigated in a laboratory set-up with a cylindrical
chamber of 50 dm3 ( l ) volume pumped by a
1500 dm3 s−1 turbomolecular pump (effective pumping
process pressure was too high for a turbo pump. The
efficiency: 400 dm3 s−1). The pressure inside was mea-
plasma was generated either by a 3.5 kW d.c. or a
sured with a capacitance gauge. The sputtering cathode
2.5 kW r.f. generator powering one pair of electrodes.
was an interpole target hollow magnetron [4] with a
X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy depth profiles were
diameter of 110 mm. The target material was AlMgSi1.
performed with a Leybold MAX 200 surface analysis
The partial pressures of the reactant gases, HMDSO
system using Mg Ka radiation for excitation in the large
(hexamethyldisiloxane) and water, were established via
area mode for improved signal to noise ratio. To avoid
a metering valve feeding the gas through an intermediate
peak overlap of Si and Al signals, the Si 2s signal was
chamber and a throttle into the sputtering chamber.
monitored instead of the Si 2p as usual. Because of
The coatings were sputtered onto glass slides and then
problems with artefacts, samples were outgassed for
investigated by a ‘‘HunterLab’’ colour and reflectivity
more than 24 h in the MAX sample transfer system.
measuring system. As a reference for colour difference
dE*, an aluminium layer was sputtered at 0.3 Pa
(0.003 mbar) Ar and <0.005 Pa (<0.00005 mbar) base
3. Results and discussion
pressure without any additional gas. The colour of this
layer was measured as L*=94.8, a*=−0.3, and
3.1. Vacuum design
b*=0.0. The other layers were measured the same way
and from the L*, a*, and b* values the colour difference
The surface-related desorption or outgassing rates
dE* was calculated according to Ref. [5]. Instead of the
a after a desorption time of 1 h of the relevant metals
lightness L*, in Fig. 3 the practically more interesting 1h
and plastics differ over a wide range. Typical values for
luminosity Y (reflectivity of a given surface to a D 65
the chamber desorption are in the range
light source with respect to the spectral sensitivity of the
human eye) [5] is indicated. a =5×10−8 to 5×10−7 mbar l s−1 cm−2
1h
The coating processes were developed on the
Desorption rates of typical plastic reflector materials
‘‘DynaMet 4V’’ production system as described else-
were found to be in the range
where [1,2] For plasma pre-treatment, the station was
fitted with a 500 m3 h−1 Roots blower because the a =5×10−6 to 3×10−5 mbar l s−1 cm−2
1h
290 H. Grünwald et al. / Surface and Coatings Technology 111 (1999) 287–296

This shows that desorption rates of metals and plastics
may differ by a factor of more than 100 after 1 h of
outgassing time. In addition, it has to be taken into
account that in a multichamber system such as the
DynaMet the coating chambers are desorbed for longer
than 1 h, whereas the substrate have less than 1 min to
desorb. This means that the desorption of the substrates
is the dominant factor for outgassing in the process.
A mass spectrometric study of some ABS raw materi-
als proved that the largest portion (generally approxi-
mately 80%) of the desorbed gas is water vapour. It
must be assumed that the outgassing rate of water is
dependent not only on the plastic material itself but also
on temperature, relative humidity, production parame-
ters, and storage conditions of the reflectors after injec-
tion molding.
In one spectrum out of four (see Fig. 4), mass signals
of 26 amu (atomic mass units) indicated the fragments
C H and/or CN, respectively that can be best explained
2 2
by outgassing of acrylonitrile, one of the monomers
forming ABS. From the data given in Fig. 3 on the
impact of background gases on the optical quality of Al
we must conclude without precisely knowing that such
monomer residues have some negative effect.
The main concern from these experiments is the
build-up of a comparatively high concentration of
reactive gases during sputtering exactly where the
damage to Al quality is a maximum, namely at the
surface to be coated.
Another very large contribution to the residual gas
background is well known from the evaporation batch
processes to arise from the usually large inner surfaces
of the coating chamber that come into contact with the
ambient air in every batch. This usually becomes a
problem if the fixtures, the inliners, and/or the evapora-
tor itself have been heavily coated by the process during
continuous production. In that case, the high vacuum
pump time before the evaporation becomes very long.
A mass spectrum from a 2 m diameter production system
taken with a Leybold PGA 100 quadrupole mass ana-
lyser directly flanged to the coating chamber briefly
before evaporation at a pressure of 0.02 Pa showed that
the residual gas consisted of about 95% water with some
low percentage of species with masses of 28, (N or
2

Fig. 4. Mass spectrum of a commercial ABS reflector raw material and the background gas in the spectrometer (top and bottom line, respectively).
The logarithmic intensity scale should be noted. The signal at 40 m/z (Ar+ main isotope) was skipped for being out of range at the given sensitivity.
The signal at 26 amu is assumed to represent C H or CN, both fragments indicative to acrylonitrile, one of the monomers forming ABS.
2 2
 H. Grünwald et al. / Surface and Coatings Technology 111 (1999) 287–296 291

CO), 32 (O ), and 44 amu (probably CO ). The next HMDSO even under non-ideal conditions such as
2 2
spectrum taken during evaporation clearly indicates that outgassing parts or fixtures and masks.
all masses related to water (18, 17, and 16 amu) dropped (4) Since the properties of the plastic parts were found
with the exception of the hydrogen signals (1 and 2 amu, to differ over a wide range, the machine has to
respectively). The most likely interpretation is that the accommodate all vacuum pre- and post-treatment
water vapour was reacting with the Al vapour forming options that can be useful to ensure good adhesion
some aluminium oxide and/or hydroxide leaving and quality of the aluminium layer.
hydrogen as a volatile byproduct. The mass spectrum
of the gas phase taken immediately after evaporation 3.2. Basic machine design
shows an increased water signal again indicating that
there is still a continuous flow of water desorbing from In the ‘‘DynaMet 4V’’, a load lock and three process
the walls. stations for pre-treatment, sputtering, and plasma top
Some more detailed experiments quantified the effect coating are grouped in an vertical position around a
of different background gases during sputtering on the rotating substrate carrier drum. Four substrate chambers
optical quality of the aluminium ( Fig. 3(a)). It was inside the drum with a usable volume of
assumed that water vapour as the main residual gas and 800 mm×450 mm×250 mm each receive the fixtures
hexamethyldisiloxane from a top coating plasma poly- loaded with the parts through the load lock. For trans-
merization process should be the main reactive gases port from one to the next process station, the drum
potentially affecting the aluminium quality. with the fixtures is rotated by 90° around a vertical axis.
From Fig. 3(a) it can be seen that at a fairly high The processes in all stations run parallel within 30 s.
power density of 24 W cm−2, water background pres- Meanwhile the chambers are sealed from each other by
sures higher than 0.01 Pa (10−4 mbar) lead to exponen- lock valves that are only opened during the 6 s trans-
tially decreasing reflectivity and increase in colour port time.
deviation of the aluminium mirror. The optical appear- For less demanding plastic parts and lower through-
ance became more and more yellowish. This corresponds put, a three-horizontal chamber ( load lock, sputtering
very well to the general finding that starting pressures
and plasma polymerization) machine (‘‘DynaMet 3H’’)
above 0.01 Pa (10−4 mbar) for Al evaporation tend to
with a loading volume of 570 mm×330 mm×250 mm
cause yellowish discoloration. The Al coating seems to
is now also available (Fig. 5).
be even more sensitive to HMDSO since the threshold
value is close to 0.003 Pa. Above 0.02 Pa the yellow
3.3. Load lock
colour turned brown.
The data from Fig. 3(b) clearly show that the colour
When the Leybold autoloader is used, the chamber
difference between sputtered aluminium layers and the
door complete with the loaded fixturing frame is pressed
Al reference layer grows and the luminosity drops
to the load lock and pumping starts immediately while
dramatically as the power density at the sputtering
the frame is transferred from the door into the rotor.
cathode is decreased. For the preset base pressures of
the background gases however, even maximum power For unloading, the frame is hanged to the door again
density of 50 W cm−2 was not sufficient to achieve while the load lock is being vented. Then the door/frame
satisfactory luminosity (Y>85) and colour (dE*=0) unit is replaced by a new one within 6 s and the cycle
appearance.
From all these experiments we concluded that the
vacuum system of the ‘‘DynaMet’’ as a fast cycle
machine for synchronized production must have the
following basic design features:
(1) The machine must be loaded via a load lock with
easy to clean fixtures both having a minimum
surface area to keep the atmosphere out from the
process environment.
(2) All processes (pre-treatment, metallization, and
plasma top coating) must be performed in separate,
well-sealed chambers having their own vacuum
system in order to avoid cross-contamination,
especially into the sputtering chamber.
(3) All pump sets should have the highest affordable
pumping efficiency (well beyond the calculated mini-
mum) to ensure low background pressures especially Fig. 5. Three-chamber coating system ‘‘DynaMet 3H’’ for car light
of water vapour and siloxane monomers such as reflectors.
292 H. Grünwald et al. / Surface and Coatings Technology 111 (1999) 287–296
starts again. This arrangement shortens total cycle time
and permits a pump time in the load lock of 30 s. The
load lock is fitted with a 2000 m3 h−1 Roots blower
backed by a large 630 m3 h−1 rotary vane pump. The
starting pressure required for unlocking the chamber
lock valves and transfer of the parts to the next station
(#10 Pa or 0.01 mbar) is reached within 12 s under
usual production conditions. To check whether the load
lock can reach this base pressure even under adverse
ambient conditions, a special experiment was set up: PC
parts were stored in an air-conditioned room under
more than 95% relative humidity at 30 °C and directly
loaded from there into the load lock that was vented
from and opened into that chamber. The result was an
increase in cycle time by only 5 s.
3.4. Pre-treatment
In the pre-treatment chamber, the parts are degassed
further, in the simplest case by a turbomolecular pump.
This is sufficient if the sputtered aluminium adheres well
to the substrate material itself or to a base lacquered
surface. If not, some oxidizing pre-treatment with an
oxygen or air plasma must be performed to form strong
chemical bonds between the polymer surface and the
Al. This is not trivial because we found that if the
plasma dose (the product of power and time) exceeds
some threshold value specific for the material, the adhe-
sion (to adhesive tape peel tests) degrades and may
become inferior to the untreated part. We found different
results for d.c. and r.f. treatment with the general
tendency that the r.f. results were superior (better homo-
geneity) but not for all materials. Typically, the plasma
treatment lasts less than 10 s at a pressure of 1 Pa when
using r.f. power. The rest of the cycle time is used for
degassing.
An additional positive effect of the plasma treatment
is enhanced desorption of adsorbed gases or vapours
from the surface that will have a positive effect on
aluminium quality.
In cases where adhesion was still not sufficient, a
plasma-polymerized base coat proved to be very success-
ful as an adhesion promoter. The surface energy of such
a coating can be tuned by choice of the starting material
and process parameters with the specific advantage that
the surface properties are nearly the same all over the
part so that surface inhomogeneities of the substrate
material are levelled out. To our surprise, we found not
only better adhesion but also improved performance of
the coating. This may be due to decreased desorption
from the base-coated parts during sputtering resulting
in better Al quality and hence, corrosion stability.
3.5. Aluminium sputtering
The higher the aluminium concentration in the gas
phase relative to the concentration of reactive gases and
the faster the coating is formed, the higher the Al purity
and hence, quality will be. The basic advantage of
evaporation in this respect is very high evaporation (and
also deposition) rate. However, this advantage is con-
siderably lowered by the satellite movement of the
fixtures on their way through the Al vapour cloud. This
means that the aluminium layer is built up when the
parts are facing the evaporator but may get contami-
nated by the residual gas when they are rotated into
the shadow.
Three main features of the DynaMet sputtering cham-
ber ensure superior aluminium quality:
(1) Sputtering cathodes of the highest possible rate [4]
with two powerful 60 kW d.c. supplies were built in
right from the beginning because the experiments
with reactive gases had shown that high optical
quality of the Al requires a sufficiently high level of
power density (see Fig. 3(b))
(2) The parts are not moved during sputtering and the
Ar flow rate and pressure are adjusted such that
thickness homogeneity even across difficult shapes
is high.
(3) The vacuum in the sputtering station is kept as
clean as possible from reactive gases by the design
of the vacuum system and the pre-treatment process.
As the result, it is easily possible to deposit better
than 95% pure aluminium under production condit-
ions.
Depending on their shape, the reflector parts can be
coated with a very good aluminium mirror in 5–10 s.
This short deposition time leaves another 15–20 s time
for additional pumping before sputtering is started. It
does not make sense to sputter any longer than necessary
(#70 nm for optimum reflectivity) because of possible
overheating by release of too much condensation energy
and the additional kinetic energy within a short time.
On the other hand, there is no need for excessive coating
because of the good conformity of the aluminium across
even demanding shapes. The reflectivity of the alumin-
ium mirrors at a wavelength of 500 nm was determined
to 90% (specified: 86). The distribution of sputtered
aluminium across the parts is superior to that for
evaporated aluminium: while the thickness ratio of the
Al coating on the front edge of the reflector relative to
the less favoured area near the socket is typically 6:1 in
evaporation [see Fig. 6(a) and (b)], 2.5:1 or better can
be achieved with sputtering [see Fig. 7(a) and (b)]. When
coating demanding geometries this better coverage by
sputtering tends to increase the total light output because
insufficient reflecting areas are avoided. In many cases
we observed in the laboratory and in production mark-
edly improved corrosion resistance of the sputtered Al
compared that of the evaporated Al. One reason we
assume is the higher average kinetic energy of the
incident Al vapour that seems not to permit columnar
 H. Grünwald et al. / Surface and Coatings Technology 111 (1999) 287–296 293

(a)

(b)

Fig. 6. XPS depth profile of a coating on a lacquered polycarbonate reflector part deposited in a large evaporation batch coater: (a) front edge;
and (b) within parabola, near bulb socket. The depth is proportional to the sputtering time of the ion gun given on the abscissa. However, if the
sputtering yield of the materials involved is different, quantitative conclusions must be drawn with care.

growth (as known from deposition by evaporation) so
the structure is more compact and dense instead of loose
and disturbed by grain boundaries. The higher kinetic
energy of the sputtered material seems to be responsible
for better adhesion of the Al layer as we observed in
extensive experiments for one material: The adhesion
(as determined by crosshatching and subsequent adhe-
sive tape peel test on the Al without any top coat) of
sputtered aluminium on some unknown ABS reflector
material without any pre-treatment could be optimized
to zero failure all over the part easily. In parallel we
tried to optimize the adhesion with a smaller evaporation
294 H. Grünwald et al. / Surface and Coatings Technology 111 (1999) 287–296

(a)

(b)

Fig. 7. XPS depth profile of a ‘‘DynaMet 4V’’ coating (without anti-haze top coat) on a lacquered PC reflector part: (a) front edge; and (b) within
parabola, near bulb socket.

batch coater (BAH 1000 from Balzers) making use of
all usual oxygen, air, and argon plasma pretreatments.
The results were always inferior to even the worst
sputtering results. However, if a sputtered Al layer
becomes too thick (>100 nm) it tends to build up
compressive stress lowering adhesion.
3.6. Plasma top coating
3.6.1. Corrosion protection
When HMDSO (hexamethyldisiloxane) is used for
this process, the surface energy of the coating is approxi-
mately 32–38 mN m−1. This is significantly higher than
 H. Grünwald et al. / Surface and Coatings Technology 111 (1999) 287–296 295

generally achieved with large evaporation systems where

less than 32 or even less than 30 mN m−1 are measured.
One positive consequence of the higher surface energy
is that it is possible to glue the front lens to the reflector
without masking if a suitable glue is chosen. However,
for the same reason, tape adhesion is also generally far
better on films from the DynaMet machines with the
consequence that any tape-based adhesion test becomes
more severe. This sometimes suggested inferior adhesion
of the DynaMet coatings compared with others from
evaporation machines if delamination of the aluminium
occurred. However, if the adhesive tape was applied to
the uncoated aluminium from either type of machine,
we found in the most cases even greater delamination
of the evaporated Al films.
We initially speculated that this higher surface energy Fig. 8. Microscopic view of haze on a lacquered polycarbonate reflector
has a negative influence on corrosion stability, because coated in a large evaporation system.
it means that the surface is less water repellent. On the
contrary, we found a broad tendency to even better
results compared with evaporation machines exceeding
the specified test duration without failure by far, e.g.
more than 1000 h (specified: 240 h) in a closed chamber
at 38 °C under 100% relative humidity or more than
60 min (specified: 10 min) in 1% NaOH solution. To our
disappointment, we also observed some failures in these
tests after half the exposure time. However, when coating
the same parts in an evaporation system, we usually
found no better, often worse results. So we concluded
that in these instances the main source of failure was
the parts.
For good corrosion performance in the humidity
chamber test, we determined a thickness of 10 nm to be
sufficient if the Al quality is good. On the other hand,
if the aluminium quality or thickness is poor, even much
thicker plasma polymer coatings cannot protect it from
corrosion. Too thick (>45 nm) anti-corrosion layers, Fig. 9. Microscopic view of haze on a non-lacquered polycarbonate
reflector coated in a large evaporation system.
however, tend to decrease the brightness of the reflector.
From these data it can be seen that the process window
is comfortably large.
In production, plasma polymerization of the corro-
sion-protective layer turned out to be an uncomplicated,
reliable, and robust process.

3.6.2. Haze prevention

The surface energy of the corrosion protection layer
is not high enough to prevent droplet condensation (see
Figs. 8–10) of vapours outgassing in the assembled head
or fog light if it is on over an extended time. The
problem seems to become more prominent if the reflector
part is no longer lacquered indicating that the dominant
contribution of the outgassing comes from the reflec-
tor body.
Different gas mixtures have been tested for post-
treatment of the anti-corrosion layer or deposition of
an additional, high surface energy coating. The post- Fig. 10. Microscopic view of a non-hazed area of the same reflector as
treatment of the anti-corrosion coating turned out to in Fig. 9.
296 H. Grünwald et al. / Surface and Coatings Technology 111 (1999) 287–296
decrease corrosion protection if oxygen-containing gases
were used. Oxygen-free gases, however, did not change
surface energy sufficiently under realistic conditions of
power density and time. In contrast, it was no problem
to deposit plasma polymer layers having surface energies
well above 60 mN m−1, although most layers had some
more or less detrimental effect on the corrosion resis-
tance of the underlying layer system. In other words,
layer stacks with good corrosion stability corroded much
faster once the high energy coating was deposited on
top such that the specification was missed. Finally we
found a plasma polymerization process for depositing a
very thin, high surface energy top coating that does not
degrade the optical properties nor the corrosion resis-
tance significantly. The process time including gas
exchange is 10 s fitting well with the corrosion protection
(15–20 s in total ) into the process time of 30 s per cycle.
The surface energy is 50–52 mN m−1 on the freshly
coated parts and increases with time probably by post-
oxidation to 56 mN m−1 at maximum. To our knowl-
edge, the process has been efficient enough to solve
nearly all haze problems in production on our machines
since the beginning of 1997. This process option has
been ordered for half of the machines to date.
4. Conclusions
The fast cycle machines of the ‘‘DynaMet 4V’’ and
‘‘3H’’ series proved to be suitable tools for cutting cost
in car lighting manufacture by offering the opportunity
for synchronized production. Further cost savings will
be achieved in reducing the total process sequence by
abandoning lacquering. Some functions of the lacquer,
namely adhesion promotion and blocking of outgassing,
now are badly missed. The wide variety of plastics
makes it difficult to identify clear tendencies and to find
simple guidelines how to process a given class of plastic
base material. We found significant differences within
the classes of polymers, even among materials with
identical specification, sometimes just between different
lots. All these inconsistencies in the substrate become
very obvious and troublesome without base lacquering.
The multichamber approach of the ‘‘DynaMet’’ systems
based on one load lock and integration of high perfor-
mance processes in their dedicated chambers for pre-
treatment, metallization, and top coating offers best
facilities for solving problems with plastic parts today
and in the near future. The product quality is at least
equal to, if not higher than, the results from the conven-
tional evaporation systems although a straight scientific
comparison is difficult if not impossible on a pro-
duction scale.
References
[1] H. Grünwald, J. Henrich, J. Krempel-Hesse, W. Dicken, S. Kunkel,
G. Ickes, J. Snyder, Rapid, high quality metallization of plastics,
SVC, 40th Annu. Tech. Conf. Proc., 1997, p. 44.
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coater for 3-dimensional plastic parts, SVC, 38th Annu. Tech.
Conf. Proc., 1995, p. 340.
[3] R. Jede, H. Peters, G. Dünnebier, O. Ganschow, U. Kaiser, K.
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