Dependences of the reflectivity and adhesion of thin metal films on the various process parameters for polyester substrates during physical vapor depositions

Various PVD techniques have been employed with a number of bright metals like Ag, Al, Ni, and Cr. E-beam evaporated sliver films turned out to be excellent with more than 96% reflectance but the adhesion was not very good Meanwhile, the adhesion of silver films deposited by using rf magnetron sputtering showed 15 to 24Kg_f/cm². When a bias of 100 V dc was additionally applied during the magnetron processes, the film adhesions were enhanced as much as 75 to 82 Kg_f/cm², which is 5 times higher than the evaporated counterpart. Along with this, the sputter-deposited silver films have revealed reflectance values of 96% and above. Thus, it is concluded that the dc biasing during sputter-deposition can be successfully utilized to produce high quality reflective films.