Coating Service

Coatings on Plastics

Plastic materials found applications in every imaginable industry for manufacture of a wide variety of parts for industrial and consumer markets. Relative ease of production of raw plastics coupled with inexpensive methods of producing plastic parts made these materials irreplaceable for everyday’s life.  Metallization of plastics is very important for providing the finished plastic parts with a rich metal look, while maintaining low-cost substrate.

There exist many metallization methods, where plastic acts as a substrate for condensation of metal vapor. Most common method of generating this vapor is thermal evaporation of metal in vacuum. While simple, this method does not provide sufficient adhesion of metal to the plastics and therefore is limited to non-demanding practical applications, where metal layer is not exposed to substantial mechanical or chemical impacts.

For more critical applications, special electroless plating processes are used to deposit well-adhered electrically conductive ‘seed’ layer. Making the surface of plastic part conductive opens multiple possibilities of creating aesthetically attractive  top finish by  electroplating, PVD, powder coatings. Unfortunately, electroless plating is limited only to ABS and ABS/PC group of plastics, substantially restricting the application range of this method. Among other disadvantages are low yield (especially for fiber-reinforced plastics), potential embrittlement and ‘orange peel effect’ of some plastics.

Plasma-activated metalizing offers an attractive alternative for producing the conductive  ‘seed’ layer’. Advantages of this approach are two-fold: firstly, in-situ  plasma activation of plastics allows increase of the adhesion of the coating and secondly, ionized metal vapor produces very dense metal films, which have considerably better properties than thermally evaporated coatings.

Systec SVS offers a proprietary, patented  technology, Valico ®  for plasma a ssisted deposition of the seed layers on plastics. In this method, plasma is generated through application of special plasma source, which ionizes metal vapor produced by evaporation. Plasma is also used to activate the plastic substrate before deposition of the metal layer.

Among advantages of the Valico ® method are:

• Virtually any plastic material can be metalized with a very good adhesion of the metal film; virtually any metal can be deposited onto the substrate;
• Very dense films;

• Excellent quality of coating surface;
• Exceptional adhesion for majority of plastics;
• Simple masking;
• Capability to deposit very thin, but still coherent films.

Typical layer structures of these films are as follows:

Systec offers the whole line of Valico®- based processing,
including preparation and finishinfg of the coated parts:

• Pre-coating treatment of raw plastic parts, for example polishing;
• Masking of the areas where coating is not allowed/needed;
• Valico® PVD deposition of the seed layer;
• Texturing (if reuired), for example laser engraving;
• Copper electroplating;
• Mechnical finishing: texturing, grinding, polishing;
• Ni-Cr electroplating or hard-PVD coating.

All these operations are carried out at our facilities under professional supervision.