Abstract
Hydrogenerated amorphous carbon (a-C:H) films can improve oxygen gas barrier characteristics of plastic food containers, by coating it on the surfaces of such containers, and is intended to enhance the preservative quality. However, it has a problem that the degradation of optical transparency in the visible light range blocks the view of the inner content. In this study, we aimed to reduce the oxygen transmission rate (OTR) as well as to improve optical transparency, and fabricated a-C:H films by the pulse plasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) films. First, it is clarified that the gas barrier performance in the a-C:H film in the vicinity of the PET boundary surface was lower than that of bulk a-C:H film. Secondly, the OTR and optical transparency of a-C:H films deposited not only from C2H2 but also from Si(CH3)4 were investigated in detail. The a-C:H film deposited from Si(CH3)4 shows high transmittance of 87% for visible light with a relatively low OTR of 3.2 cc/(m2·atm·day).
