The fast and quantitative measurement of barrier properties in polymeric films and encapsulating materials

Polymer materials are widely used nowadays for packaging and encapsulation of various products starting from groceries up to microelectronics and solar cells to protect them against environmental factors such as moisture and oxidation. The key prerequisite for this protection are well-tuned barrier properties against water vapor and oxygen. The measurements of barrier properties represent therefore a crucial quality control to guarantee a required shelf lifetime or reliability of the product. In our lab at Fraunhofer IMWS, we can quantify barrier properties of polymer films and gels using a permeation cell connected to a mass spectrometer. This method, which can be used for quality control and to support computer simulations needed to address reliability issues, will be presented in our talk.