Electronics Use in Harsh Environments

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. Nando Kaminski works in the University of Bremen at the Institut für elektrische Antriebe, Leistungselektronik und Bauelemente, Germany. Associate Professor Bálint Medgyes works in the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Budapest, Hungary.

• 1. Basic introduction to environmental effects on electronics and important issues today2. Power Electronics in harsh environments – Lifetime estimation by accelerated testing3. Humidity in power converters of wind turbines: field conditions and effect on reliability4. Humidity induced failure mechanisms especially under high voltage load5. PCBA material and process cleanliness as a pre-requisite for humidity robustness: comparison of test methods and guidelines6. Electrochemical Migration in Electronics Applications7. Influence of corrosive gases on corrosion in power electronics8. Corrosion of electronics due to outgassing of iodine and phosphorous compounds from polymers9. Corrosion mechanisms leading to thermal events in low voltage electronics