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Surface and Coatings Technology, Volume 235, 2013, Pages 361-366.
S. Majee, M.F. Cerqueira, D. Tondelier, B. Geffroy, Y. Bonnassieux, P. Alpuim, J.E. Bourée.
Laboratoire de Physique des Interfaces et des Couches Minces, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS UMR 7647, 91128 Palaiseau, France and
Centro de Física, Universidade do Minho, 4710-057 Braga, Portugal and
Laboratoire de Chimie des Surfaces et Interfaces, IRAMIS/SPCSI CEA Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France and
INL — International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, 4715–330 Braga, Portugal.
Abstract
In this work we produce and study silicon nitride (SiNx) thin films deposited by Hot Wire Chemical Vapor Deposition (HW-CVD) to be used as encapsulation barriers for flexible organic photovoltaic cells fabricated on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrates in order to increase their shelf lifetime. We report on the results of SiNx double-layers and on the equivalent double-layer stack where an Ar-plasma surface treatment was performed on the first SiNx layer. The Ar-plasma treatment may under certain conditions influences the structure of the interface between the two subsequent layers and thus the barrier properties of the whole system. We focus our attention on the effect of plasma treatment time on the final barrier properties. We assess the encapsulation barrier properties of these layers, using the calcium degradation test where changes in the electrical conductance of encapsulated Ca sensors are monitored with time. The water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) is found to be ~ 3 × 10− 3 g/m2·day for stacked SiNx double-layer with 8 min Ar plasma surface treatment.
