Preparation of High-barrier Polyethylene Terephthalate bottle by Microwave Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition

Abstract

In this work, we reported the investigation of diamond-like carbon (DLC) coating on the inner surface of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles by Microwave Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition to improve their barrier properties. We used 2.45 GHz microwave to generate plasma, acetylene (C2H2) and argon (Ar) were used as monomer gas and diluted gas. The effects of plasma process parameters on deposition uniformity and barrier properties of thin films were studied in detail. In addition, we designed a new antenna shape to improve the uniformity of film deposition. We analyzed the microstructure and morphology of the DLC coating by atom force microscope (AFM). Fourier transform infrared spectroscope (FTIR) and Raman spectroscope were employed to investigate chemical composition and bonding structure. The deposition rate was obtained by Step Profiler. For the barrier properties, we measured the oxygen transmission rate (OTR) of the PET bottle coated with DLC film. It is noted that the uniformity of film deposition is affected by the process parameters and antenna shape, after optimizing the process parameters and antenna shape, the barrier property of PET bottles is improved obviously.