A new inorganic-organic polymer for the passivation of thin film capacitors

Inorganic-organic polymers with barrier properties against water vapor, excellent electrical data (3, 2, R _D>10¹⁶ cm, E _D up to 400 V/µm) and good adhesion to various substrate materials have been developed. Tailored modifications of these materials provide an excellent protective coating for thin film capacitors. Several mm thick, expensive, encapsulations could be replaced by thin coatings (up to 10 µm). The polymer coating allows the use of thin film chip capacitors in surface-mount technology. As a measure for the efficiency of the coating, the capacitance decrease under controlled humidity has been used. The influence of the material composition, the type of catalyst during sol-gel processing and the curing conditions have been studied. Adhesion and water vapor permeation properties of the polymers and rheological properties of the coating solutions have been investigated. A protective coating is developed, which increases the withstandness of capacitors against humid conditions (90°C, 100% rel. humidity) by a factor of about 30 (compared to uncoated capacitors) and shows no crack formation during thermal cycling.     

Analysis of polymer films by diffuse reflectance FTIR spectroscopy: Characterization of terminal carboxyl functionalities

Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy in the diffuse reflectance mode was used to study polyethylene terephthalate (PET) films. The polymer film (12 μm, molecular weight M₁ = 18,000) was placed on a finely powdered KBr matrix, used as a reference. Infrared spectra exhibited a new band at 1684 cm^?1, not usually reported in the literature. This band is assigned to the C? O stretching vibration of a terminal acidic function in the presence of internal hydrogen bonds. In the carbonyl region, artifacts created by specular reflection are also discussed. The assignment of the band at 1684 cm^?1 is confirmed by transmission measurements on the overtone of carbonyl group (3335 cm^?1), using polymer films with thicknesses greater than 200 μm and by comparison with polymer of different molecular weight. These acidic functions can be used to monitor the rate of polymerization. It is therefore possible to obtain information on the polymerization rate of PET films, using diffuse reflectance and transmission analysis, directly on the solid. © 1992 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.