nDECO™ - Beneq ALD coatings for decorative coatings
In recent years, the aesthetical values of a product, its beauty in terms of how it looks and feels, have become important in making it stand out from the crowd, especially for electronic mobile devices. For this need, Beneq ALD has developed unique decorative and functional thin film coatings, nDECO™.
ALD has a lot to offer in decorative coatings if compared to existing coating techniqes. As a coating method for decoration, ALD enables:
- Coating objects that are difficult or impossible for other methods
- Dark, absorptive color films
- Metal-like, dielectric non-metal coatings on polymers
ALD, when creating a color on a surface, makes use of so-called dichroic filters (interference filters). Dichroic filters create a color by selectively transmitting light of a small range of colors while reflecting other colors, whereas conventional paint makes color by selective color absorption by pigments embedded in the paint. For a dichroic filter, the color viewed through the filter is not the same as the reflected, visible color.
A dielectric mirror is a metal-like reflecting surface realised with an optical film stack that is not conductive. This makes dielectric coatings RF compatible (no RF field attenuation) and suitable for decorative use near electrically sensitive devices and components.
Benefits of Beneq nDECO:
- Complex 3D object can be mirror coated
- Adhesion is typically better than for physical vapor deposition (PVD) films
- Less coating degradation due to, e.g., humidity and oxidation, as compared to metal mirrors
- Plastic can be given the appearance of metal
- The color depth and density of nDECO color coatings is virtually impossible to obtain with absorbing pigments
- Thin film coatings do not require the use of binders and solvents.