Water vapour kills electronics and PCs

Paul Boughton

Water vapour is everywhere. It is the world's most widespread and costly cause of damage, failure and rot. Water damages and even kills electronics, circuits, boards, components and computers - even military grade missiles have crashed due to this problem.

Although liquid water can easily be kept out with a good seal, water vapour cannot - instead it permeates in through the material of the seal, enclosure or casing. Many traditional materials (eg, cellulose, EVOH or PVOH) are almost useless barriers against water vapour and this can result in catastrophic failure.

Versaperm, specialists in vapour permeability measurement equipment, now offers a series of faster and more efficient ways to test (and quantify) this problem for electronics and electronic enclosures. It can measure the vapour permeability of enclosures, materials, flat samples and even complete products. It is simple to use, extremely accurate and fast - with some materials results, which represent years of use in the field, can be gained in as little as thirty minutes (traditional methods take days or even weeks.

The Versaperm instrument was purpose designed for this task and gives results that are accurate in the parts per million range (PPM) for most samples and vapours, PPB for some. It can measure several samples, seals or enclosures at a time in a variety of environmental conditions.

Optionally the system can also work with virtually all other common gasses and vapours including hydrocarbons, solvents, and CO2.