Humidity and Electronics

Dr. Rajan Ambat is currently Professor of Corrosion and Surface Engineering at Section of Materials and Surface Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark. He is also the Manager for the CELCORR/CreCon Industrial Consortium on climatic reliability of electronics at DTU and Research Manager for the Corrosion node of Danish Hydrocarbon Research and Technology Centre. He has more than 15 years of expertise in the area of humidity and electronics, and developing mitigation strategies together with industries. This include electrochemical failure mechanisms at material, component, PCBA, and systems level, PCBA cleanliness issues and humidity interaction, modelling humidity interaction with electronics and pro-actively defining solutions. Prevention and predictive strategies include intrinsic and extrinsic methods for enhancing humidity robustness of electronics systems, not only the prevention methods based on corrosion and electrochemical understanding and coatings, but also using humidity flow modelling and climate data as a source of predictability for aggressiveness, and corrosion prediction sensors for electronic corrosion. Presently he is the Chairman for the Working Party on Corrosion reliability of electronic devices under European Federation of Corrosion and Board member, IMAPS Nordic, Europe. He has published extensively in a wide variety of topic connected to humidity and electronics. Dr. Kamila Piotrowska obtained her PhD in the field of Climatic reliability of electronics from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, which was followed by the post-doctoral research at the same place. She has over 7 years of experience in the area of humidity-related reliability issues of electronics. Her PhD and post-doctoral research work in the CELCORR research group were specifically focused on understanding the interaction between the PCBA and humidity, and she worked on several projects related to the humidity effects on automotive and power electronics systems. She is currently working as a reliability engineer in the Danish MedTech industry where, through novel technology and product development activities, she strives for enhancing the environmental robustness of the hearing instruments and their accessories. Her work related to the humidity effects on electronic devices led to many scientific publications, patents, and creation of industrial guidelines.

• 1. Electronics today, material use, and corrosion2. Basic theory of corrosion relevant to electronics and details of humidity interaction with electronics 3. Humidity related electrochemical failure modes and influencing factors4. Materials and components of electronic systems, and susceptibility to humidity effects5. Importance of PCBA cleanliness in humidity interaction with electronics6. Case studies on humidity related failures in electronic7. Mitigation methods for corrosion in electronics: Intrinsic and extrinsic methods8. Corrosion reliability analysis: test methods and standards