Exploitable results Continuous atmospheric in-line aerosol chemical vapour deposition at low temperature The sol-gel research is related to the aerosol-gel deposition process (original sol-gel deposition process based on the hydrolysis/condensation of a liquid film obtained from an ultrasonically generated aerosol). A study was made of different experimental parameters which control the solution reactivity and the mechanisms involved in the sol-gel transformation and in the densification of the film at low temperature. This study resulted in the definition of conventional alkoxide solutions and of experimental conditions leading to mechanically resistant and chemically stable layers with controlled thickness and refractive index, for a curing temperature of only 110 C (thus compatible with several kinds of thermally fragile substrates). According to published state of the art, this know-how appears very innovative because comparable works published in the sol-gel literature usually involve chemically modified alkoxides (ORMOCER-ORMOSIL systems) which are generally expensive and chemically complicated. The chemical, physical and thermodynamical mechanisms which control the aerosol-gel deposition of thin films were studied. A better knowledge of these mechanisms led to the design and building of very efficient laboratory-scale deposition reactors. Now at laboratory-scale, present know-how concerning aerosol-gel process allows this process to be compared with classical sol-gel deposition techniques such as spin-coating or dip-coating (flexibility, reliability, uniformity). Searching for OpenAIRE data... There was an error trying to search data from OpenAIRE No results available
