Component Management

Pioneers of a liquid repellent technology employed by smartphone manufacturers, P2i, has received a £10m pound funding package from Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank’s Growth Finance team. With its headquarters in Oxfordshire, British company P2i has already applied its innovative water resistant nano-coating solution to more than 175 million smartphones. Globally, 900,000 smartphones are damaged by liquids every day, at an estimated...

Whether bonding metal to plastic, silicon to glass, polymers to other polymers of different durometers, biological content to polymeric microtiter plates or even bonding to PTFE, plasma can be used to promote adhesion. This according to Michael Barden of PVA TePla, a company that designs and manufactures plasma systems.

ROMIL solvents are helping researchers at the Cavendish Laboratory, the University of Cambridge’s Department of Physics, to develop novel quantum dots which could be used in the next generation of solar panels. James Xiao, a PhD student in the laboratory, explained: “We’re currently working on quantum dots which emit light in the infrared range, with the aim of significantly increasing the efficiency of photovoltaic cells.&rdquo...

A series of new workbench equipment, including a soldering station, a pair of rework stations and a fume extractor has extended the RS Pro range of rework tools. These devices target repair work in production facilities, as well as in service environments or for engineers and technicians working in laboratories.

For 60 years computers have become smaller, faster and cheaper. But engineers are approaching the limits of how small they can make silicon transistors and how quickly they can push electricity through devices to create digital ones and zeros. That limitation is why Stanford electrical engineering Professor Jelena Vuckovic is looking to quantum computing, which is based on light rather than electricity.

Parker Chomerics has released  THERM-A-GAP GEL, which is supplied as a pre-cured, single part thermal gel compound for dispensing over heat-generating electronic components. Said to offer an excellent price-to-performance ratio, THERM-A-GAP GEL45 is purpose-designed to eliminate time consuming hand assembly, decrease installation costs and reduce the complexity of customer manufacturing and purchasing functions.

Cortec  has developed a  water-based rust preventative (RP) that reduces applied cost by 40% compared to a bestselling oil-based product. It is said to offer excellent corrosion protection while reducing carbon footprint and cutting common labour or disposal costs associated with traditional RPs.  

Carrying out maintenance tasks inside a nuclear plant puts severe strains on equipment, due to extreme temperatures that are hard for components to endure without degrading. Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have come up with a radically new way to make actuators that could be used in such extremely hot environments. The system relies on oxide materials similar to those used in many of today’s rechargeable batteries, in that ions m...

As electronics become increasingly pervasive in our lives – from smart phones to wearable sensors – so too does the ever rising amount of electronic waste they create. A United Nations Environment Program report found that almost 50 million tons of electronic waste were thrown out in 2017—more than 20 percent higher than waste in 2015. Troubled by this mounting waste, Stanford engineer Zhenan Bao and her team are rethinking...

Electrolube has complemented its Aromatic Free Acrylic Coating range with a range extension, entitled AFA-G. The new addition is deliberately more viscous than a standard coating, designed for use as a permanent masking or damming material, either preventing capillary action around components such as connectors, or as a mask between the ‘coat` and ‘no-coat` areas of the PCB.