Rapid transfer from lab to roll – continuous coating on the pilot scale

Electrochromic coating, applied under clean room conditions on the new roll-to-roll coating plant at Fraunhofer ISC / Source: K. Dobberke for Fraunhofer ISC

Saving R&D time while reliably bringing new material formulations into near-production coating processes in a cost-efficient way: A clear benefit offered by Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC with a novel coating plant especially designed for easy up-scaling. Functional coatings are an ideal way to provide products with new properties by using just a minimum of extra material. Fraunhofer ISC develops customized advanced coatings, e. g. based on ORMOCER®s (Trademark of Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e. V., München, in Germany), for all kinds of applications and substrates. To implement these new materials in industrial production they must be adapted to match wet chemical coating processes on site to keep costs low.

The roll-to-roll coating plant recently established at Fraunhofer ISC is of modular design and thus allows adaptation of coating materials on pilot scale in maximum bandwith of 500 mm. Critical material and process parameters can be tested and approved long before transferring them to the actual industrial plant.

The in-house coating unit is suitable to work with all kinds of substrates, from plastic films to metal or ceramic foils, and with all kinds of coating materials such as hybrid or organic polymers, inorganic sol-gel materials or silicon. Application and curing processes are equally adaptable, and switching from one material system to another is fast and easy. An extra benefit: The roll-to-roll coating plant is located in a clean room of class ISO 8 according to DIN EN ISO 14644-1. This ensures high quality, extremely faultfree coating as, e. g., required for functional or optical coatings.  So, Fraunhofer ISC has added new potential to customized coating and coating application R&D.

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