Highly water-impermeable SiNx film prepared using surface-wave-plasma chemical vapor deposition and improvement of the barrier performance for organic light-emitting displays

•Highly transparent, water-impermeable SiNx films were obtained.•The films were fabricated by surface-wave-plasma chemical vapor deposition.•A multilayer structure with SiNx layers and a SiOxCy layer was developed•SiOxCy intermediate layers were developed as a defect decoupling layer.•The SiOxCy layers were fabricated using same deposition method as SiNx films.

Under the previously developed conditions for highly transparent SiNx films, a highly water-impermeable SiNx film was obtained using surface-wave-plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (SWP-CVD) with an increased distance between the dielectric window and a substrate (gap), where a water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) of 1.0 × 10− 5 g/m2/day was achieved with a gap of 200 mm. Evaluation of the WVTR indicated that deposition of the SiNx film on both sides of a polyimide base film was more effective than simply increasing the SiNx film thickness. A plasma polymerized SiOxCy film was prepared using SWP-CVD in a vacuum, similar to preparation of SiNx barrier film instead of the polyimide base film. A multilayer structure with a SiOxCy intermediate layer between the SiNx barrier layers resulted in high barrier performance with a low WVTR of 2.0 × 10− 5 g/m2/day that could be applied for the fabrication of organic light-emitting diode devices.