Characterization of an industrial plasma process to treat fluoropolymers and polyethylene terephthalate for the solar energy industry

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The green gas reduction strategies put forward by many countries all over the world recently led to thesignatures of major treaties, such as the Paris agreement. Basically, these agreements focus on the two mainvectors that may drastically lead to a decrease in CO2 production. On one hand, much efforts are directed tominimizing energy consumption while, on the other hand, more environmentally friendly energy productionfacilities are developed. It is in this context that Saint-Gobain Canada Inc. developed a polymer thin film to beapplied on the surface of house and building windows. Essentially, this technology takes advantage ofpolyethylene terephthalate (PET), which highly absorbs UV light. Once installed on windows, this polymerfilm captures heat and directs it back into the room, thus improving overall comfort during cooler months,while lowering energy use and helping to save energy. In warmer months, it reflects solar heat away fromwindows, reducing the need and cost for interior cooling. However, as most polymers, PET is not particularly agood candidate when comes the time to make laminates out of it or to print inks of all kinds on it, because of itslow surface energy. Saint-Gobain also seeks to develop materials that will enable buildind-up efficientphotovoltaic devices to maximize the yield of solar energy conversion.The strategy will take advantage of thelow absorptivity of fluorinated polymers throughout the whole UV and visible spectral range. Once applied ontop of photovoltaic devices, thin films made of fluorinated polymers enable to protect the silicon-based devicesagainst environmental conditions while minimizing the light energy loss through the polymer films. This limitsthe loss of solar energy production caused by the necessary device protection. Unfortunately, the use offluorinated polymers for the targeted application is limited by their poor adhesiveness when comes the time toglue them to any devices. Accordingly, the objective of this project will be to characterize an industrial plasmaprocess to modify the surface of PET and fluoropolymers, therefore enabling assembling them with any othermaterials.