The nanoscopic holes that lead to manufacturing leaps
There is something in common between the food carton that holds your milk and your mobile phone: both contain extremely thin material layers, where the tiniest of defects can dramatically shorten the product’s lifetime. The opaque lining inside food cartons, the transparent layers that coat imminent flexible phone screens and the flexible solar panels that will eventually turn your roof into a powerhouse, all contain thin-film technologies that require top quality coating to ensure an industrial edge.
As a part of the NanoMend project, scientists and engineers in European academia and industry are developing defect imaging, detection and cleaning technologies designed for high-speed manufacturing of these new products.
To raise the competitiveness of the well established market of coated paper packaging and elevate the emerging market of flexible electronics, the European Commission has granted 7.25 million to a research project called NanoMend, for the detection and removal of nano-defects.
NanoMend Project Co-ordinator, Professor Liam Blunt from the University of Huddersfield, said, “The key challenge facing the project is overcoming the conflict between the speed at which the substrate rolls through the production machine and the resolution of the defect detection system, so that it is simultaneously possible to identify defects down to the nanoscale without slowing down the production. Achieving this will involve integrating defect detection and technologies into fast paced, continuous manufacturing lines.�
The NanoMend consortium, led by the University of Huddersfield, includes significant European players in the packaging, electronics, and solar energy industries. Flexible electronics has the potential to make a significant contribution to the recovery of European manufacturing, but in order to successfully capitalise on this potential, it is critical that efficient production processes be developed. A significant hurdle to the implementation of a high level of production is the reduction and eventual elimination of nano-scale defects that occur in thinfilm coatings laid on flexible substrates such as plastic films. Coated papers, as well as newer technologies, such as thin-film digital displays and flexible solar modules, require barrier coatings to ensure their longevity against everyday environmental elements. These barrier coatings and the underlying thin-films may have defects. These defects can take the form of contamination by fine particles or pinholes that are up to one hundred-thousand times finer than a human hair. In food packaging, pinholes can let gases pass through coated papers and accelerate food oxidation, causing it to deteriorate. In flexible electronics, pinholes may internally reduce the quality of underlying thin-film electronic devices and externally allow water vapour ingress that will progressively damage them. 16 success through nanomaterials
NanoMend will establish two working pilot production lines. One line, featuring defect detection and removal technologies, will be sited at the Swiss manufacturer of flexible solar modules, Flisom AG. The ultimate aim of the work is to increase solar module efficiency, lifespan and consequently solar energy affordability. A second production line will also be installed at the Finnish paper and coated fibre products manufacturer Stora Enso, where the detection and cleaning of defects, generated during the manufacture of polymer coated fibre products will extend the shelf life of packaged food products. For more information concerning this project, visit www.nanomend.eu