Publications

An epoxy-based conformal coating with a very low modulus has been developed for the environmental protection of electronic devices and for stress relief of those devices. The coating was designed to be removable by incorporating thermally-reversible Diels-Alder (D-A) adducts into the epoxy resin utilized in the formulation. The removability of the coating allows us to recover expensive components during development, to rebuild during production, to upgrade the components during their lifetime, to perform surveillance after deployment, and it aids in dismantlement of the components after their lifetime. The removability is the unique feature of this coating and was characterized by modulus versus temperature measurements, dissolution experiments, viscosity quench experiments, and FTIR. Both the viscosity quench experiments and the FTIR measurements allowed us to estimate the equilibrium constant of the D-A adducts in a temperature range from room temperature to 90 °C. © 2007 American Chemical Society.

The chemical and structural changes within thin films of (3-glycidoxypropyl)trimethoxysilane (GPS) after exposure for various periods of time to air saturated with either D 2O or H 2O at 80°C were studied. The X-ray and neutron reflectivity (XR and NR), combined wuth attenuated total reflection infrared (ATR-IR) spectroscopy were used. The chemical degradation mechanism was identified by IR as hydrolysis of siloxane bonds. GPS films were prepared by dip-coating, which resulted in a greater and more variable thickness than for the spin-coated samples, for ATR-IR. The little changes in the reflectivity data was observed for films conditioned with D 2O at 80°C for one month.

Abstract not provided.

Abstract not provided.