Plasmatreat is expanding its capacity with a move to new premises in South Oxfordshire.   

At productronica 2023, Nico Coenen, Global Director, Electronics Market at Plasmatreat, talks to Electronic Specifier’s Mick Elliott about the background of Plasmatreat and the new products it has at the show.

The optimum plasma nozzle for every application: Whether treatment of particularly temperature-sensitive materials, wide-area pretreatment of surfaces or homogeneous surface coating.

Volatile organic compounds (VOC) occur when solvents and solvent-containing products are used, and they are harmful to the environment. Nevertheless, manufacturing in many industries still involves pre-treating surfaces with primers, bonding agents or other chemicals that release VOCs. With its Openair-Plasma process, Plasmatreat has announced that it now offers an environmentally friendly alternative.

In the various production steps, highly effective nanocoatings, such as anti-corrosion or insulation coatings, help to achieve desired attributes and to prevent undesired side effects. PlasmaPlus technology is used to apply nano coatings on different surfaces with different functionalities.

The recently released Openair-Plasma from Plasmatreat is a technology designed to activate and clean surfaces. It is used in numerous applications to pretreat different substrates. It can also be used to clean metal surfaces for solid wire bonding.

Earlier this year Massimo Fiorani, Managing Director of WISE, and Christian Buske, Managing Director of Plasmatreat, signed an international cooperation agreement for the use of Openair-Plasma in PCB-FPC and chemical milling market; Plasmatreat's technology was applied on the new Wonderwise 220 machine from Wise.

The requirements for electronic assemblies are becoming more and more demanding. This is not only due to an increase in packaging density and progressive miniaturisation, but also to an increase in areas of application, openair-plasma pre-treatment could be the solution.

A study by Research and Markets, reported in Business Wire, has estimated that the global market for electrical connectors will reach $80.4bn by 2023, with a compound annual growth rate of 4.9%. Automobiles, avionics, watercraft, medical devices, and thousands of other applications depend on electrical connectors to carry power and communication between critical components. 

Due to increasing miniaturisation and packing density on assemblies Plasmatreat has recorded a higher demand for Openair-Plasma in combination with conformal coatings in electronic manufacturing. Plasma application as pre-treatment to conformal coating of assemblies and components ensures that the process window for conformal coating is widened, guaranteeing long-lasting connections and functionality.

For the manufacture of semiconductors, the cleaning of metal surfaces before wire bonding or injection moulding of the semiconductor housing is still an important and necessary step. Contaminated and oxidised metal surfaces can cause low wire bond strength and lead to failures due to interruption of the electrical contacts.