Lamar Young -
Specialty Coating Systems

Presentation Abstract:

Advances in Conformal Coatings for Improving Reliability of Innovative Electronics
The role of polymers in electronics, particularly in miniaturized devices and components, continues to grow rapidly due to increasing demand for more reliable products and advances in technologies. As the number of electronic devices grows, the challenge to make them safe, effective and to find protection solutions for components, which are ever increasing in their complexity and decreasing in their dimension, also increases. For a number of years, conformal coatings have offered a level of protection to components; however, new advances in these technologies enable even greater protection and reliability for advanced electronics. 

This presentation will provide an overview of commercially-available and industry-qualified conformal coating types for electronics applications and highlights reasons for their specific use, advantages and disadvantages, application methods and recent advancements that could help improve reliability of innovative electronics further. In addition, it will compare and highlight advances in Parylene technologies, which differentiate themselves from other available conformal coatings and polymeric materials when considering advanced protection and reliability of miniaturized, flexible and high density electronics. 

This presentation will also discuss advances in adhesion technologies, which are critical to the performance of conformal coatings, and aspects of electronics design and manufacturing that should be considered prior to the application of conformal coatings. Conformal coatings can offer excellent protection to a wide range of applications, including circuit card assemblies, PCBs, MEMS, LEDs, sensors, lab-on-a-chip devices, medical electronics and flexible electronic circuits and components, to name a few.