MultiTran - Measurement of the permeability of ultra-high performance barrier layers

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High performance barrier layers prevent the passage of atmospheric oxygen and moisture,along with other species such as carbon dioxide and ethylene, to/from the materials anddevices they protect. The analytical instrumentation used to qualify such barrier layers is agrowth market with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of >20%and projected to be>£140 million by 2021. The market divides between the established speciality packagingmarket for foods and pharmaceuticals etc. growing at GDP rates +5% and the emergingplastic electronics markets with a CAGR of >50%. To achieve the required device lifetimes of>10 years requires ultra-high performance barrier layers with water vapour transmission rates(WVTR) of 1.0 10-6 g/m2/day. Such transmission rates are 100x below that measureable withcommercially available instrumentation today.We plan to demonstrate an instrument that can measure WVTR to the levels required andultimately tap into this unmet need of the emerging plastic electronics market. The techniqueis based on an innovative new type of mass spectrometer ionisation source using plasma toionise the species of interest and is protected by a pending patent application. We willdemonstrate the performance of the instrument using both calibrated samples obtainedthrough the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and samples from prospective customers.The unique ability of a mass spectrometer to measure multiple species simultaneously willalso allow a single unit of our instrument to replace multiple single species measurementinstruments currently being used throughout the speciality packaging market.