Plasma “Glass” Barrier Coating Developed for Reusable PET Bottles
IKV and KHS Corpoplast in Germany collaborate on SiOx barrier coating that can withstand caustic washing for multi-trip PET bottles.
Micro-thin, glass-like silicon oxide (SiOx) coatings deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) have been used for years to provide gas barrier to PET bottles. However, such coatings are not resistant to the caustic-soda washing process used to clean multi-trip PET bottles. So, until now, the desire in Europe to convert PET bottles from single-use to multi-use capability has been at odds with the gas-barrier requirements of beverages such as fruit juices, beer or carbonated soft drinks.
That conflict reportedly has been resolved by the development of a PECVD SiOx barrier coating that withstands caustic-soda washing. This is the result of an ongoing joint research project by the Institute for Plastics Processing (IKV) in Aachen, Germany, and German PET machinery maker KHS Corpoplast, which supplies a PECVD coating process called FreshSafe. The work is funded by the German Research Foundation.
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