Conformal coatings offer tremendous protection to printed circuit board assemblies, but this assumes they properly adhere to the PCB. Application errors are all too common, causing delamination and otherwise poor adhesion of the material. So before producing at scale, you should routinely conduct adhesion tests to validate the integrity of your production processes.

It's no secret that conformal coatings increase the lifetime of electronic devices by providing a thin barrier that strengthens their ability to withstand harsh environmental conditions. That said, a lesser-known truth is adhesives and encapsulants provide a significantly higher level of protection on the entire assembly.

Why is that? Well, adhesives and encapsulants promote assembly protection by:

• creating environmental seals that protect against moisture and corrosion
• providing high-temperature resistance
• increasing shock and vibration-dampening
• generating strong bonds to a variety of substrates
• maintaining low shrinkage
• offering thermal conductivity

Bury it in

Chase Corporation, through our HumiSeal® and Resin Designs divisions, has spent the past decade preparing protection and reliability solutions for complex electronics. Notably, within the emerging EV market, we have identified needs within the assembly of EV motors where superior adhesion and protection are particularly critical.  

Most anyone over the age of 30 has probably seen Back to the Future and remembers Marty McFly. One line of Marty’s that inexorably drew him into ill-advised actions was the classic “Nobody calls me yellow.” Nothing good comes from yellow, and this turns out to be just as applicable in LCD screen manufacture as it was in the movie.

During the assembly process, the use of a liquid optically clear adhesive (LOCA) is important for ideal visual properties in LCD screen manufacture. The assembly process has evolved and advanced, but there are still potential weaknesses or defects that must be taken into account in both adhesive selection and process design. In this blog installment, we will discuss one of these potential defects: entrapped bubbles.

Haze and lack of clarity are considered among the most vexing and stubborn of defects in the assembly of LCD screens and surfaces. Significant advances have been made in the optical quality and capability of liquid crystals and LEDs; however, these advances can be stunted by choices made further along in the assembly process. Specifically, liquid optically clear adhesives (LOCAs) used in the bonding of assembly layers can cause haze and light refraction either immediately or under certain aging conditions. The proper design of LOCA materials must take this risk of haze development into consideration. There are a number of effective approaches to minimizing or eliminating haze.

Liquid optically clear adhesives (LOCA) provide superior optical enhancement and anti-glare properties in the manufacture of liquid crystal displays. Light, temperature and moisture can significantly affect the physical and optical properties of these adhesives, promoting yellowing or discoloration, delamination, and loss of adhesion. In this discussion, we will explain the use of “accelerated weathering exposure” in the design of LOCA and its advantages over more traditional individual factor analysis.

Consisting of a resin and a hardener, a two-component epoxy can be formulated to offer a wide range of mechanical, thermal and electrical properties. While mix ratios differ, they all offer the ability to cure at ambient temperatures or elevated temperatures for faster cures. Here are a few tips to help you mix and apply your two-part epoxy.

Electronics continue to be placed into harsher environments, and PCB component vibration dampening remains a challenge for many industries. When the solder connection strength is not going to be sufficient to withstand years of vibration, there is a solution: staking materials.

Numerous fields of industry manufacture products that are prone to high-vibration environments. Some of them are: