Friction characteristics between thin plastic film and steel roller

Abstract

To establish the Roll-to-Roll Printed Electronics, which can be applied to manufacture the high functional thin film based devices, it is needed to combine the Roll-to- Roll transportation system and coating technology effectively. For that purpose one of important factors to be considered is the friction characteristics between the thin plastic film and steel roller. In past research, however, as far as authors know, there is no research which describes friction characteristics between thin plastic film and steel roller. In this paper, the static friction between the plastic film and steel roller was measured by pulley method while changing film thickness of film, roller surface roughness, web tension, and relative humidity. As a result, the static friction coefficient between thin film and steel roller was significantly influenced by film thickness and roller surface roughness, web tension and relative humidity have an effect on the static friction coefficient. From analysis of variance, it was confirmed statistically that contribution ratio of three factors, relative humidity, web tension and surface roughness which were 23.8 %, 32.6 % and 36.1 %, were very high.