Webinar: EMI Shielding, Grounding, and Thermal Management for Connectors and Cable Assemblies - powered by Happy Scribe

Hello everyone and welcome to today's webinar. Just a few housekeeping details for everyone before we begin. Please be sure to set yourself on mute if you are not already. After the webinar is over, we will have time for a live question and answer session. If you have questions during the presentation, which we do encourage, please feel free to type them in the Q and A box whenever you think of it and we'll make every effort to address your question at the end. And finally, not to worry if you miss any of the presentation. This webinar will be recorded and a link to view it on your own time will be sent to you following the live presentation. Now let's welcome today's speakers Ben Nedelman and Chaz Brown of Parker Chomerics.

Hi everyone and welcome to the webinar. My name is Ben Nudelman, I'm the Global Market Manager for Consumer Electronics for Chomerics and have been with the team for five years.

Hello. My name is Chaz Brown. I'm the Chomerics Product Line manager for our molded conductive elastomers.

Today we'll start with a brief introduction about Chomerics and then dive right into the content of the webinar. First, we will mention a few trends in the cables and connectors space and then get into the technical discussion about solutions for shielding and thermal management in connector assemblies. We will present real life application examples along the way and end with the all important question and answer session. First, just a quick note about who we are. Parker Chomerics is a division of Parker Hannifin and we are the global leader in the development and application of EMI shielding, electrical, grounding and thermal interface materials. Our core competencies are in material science and process technology. Chomerics offers a market driven product development cycle featuring integrated electronics housing, and we are proud to offer custom engineered solutions and integrated global supply chain management to all of our customers.

Chomeric's technologies fall into four general product families. The first is electromagnetic interference or EMI shielding. This family includes all gasket metal products, paints, coatings, specialty materials and laminates that are used in electronics to protect signals from being disrupted by external or internal frequencies. This product family also includes all electrically conductive materials used for grounding.

The second product family includes thermal interface materials. These materials are found on most printed circuit boards and are designed to transfer heat in order to prevent electronics from overheating. They come in a number of forms, a few of which we will talk about today.

Integrated and Optical Solutions is a third product family and uses our expertise in automated assembly to make tens of millions of complex parts every year for our customers.

And lastly, engineered plastics rounds out the portfolio. These mostly injection molded materials include both conductive and non-conductive polymer types and are used across the industries. We want to briefly take a look at the connector market and call out a few trends impacting the industry globally. The connectors industry is anticipated to grow at a 6.1% CAGR annually over the next few years, reaching more than $84 billion by 2026. This growth is spurred on by a few significant trends that we are all experiencing.

Industrial Internet of Things, or IoT, also referred to as Industry 4.0, is one of the largest movements the manufacturing space has seen in decades. Industrial IoT is going to be a leader of 5G applications, the first time in history that the commercial rather than consumer market will drive a new generation of broadband connectivity.

Vehicle electrification in the form of electric vehicles, as well as the plethora of ADAS or Advanced Driver Assistance Systems integrated into vehicles, is a tremendous driver pun intended of fast and reliable connectivity. These connections occur between components and systems within the vehicle, as well as external ports such as charging stations.

Lastly, the rapid rise in consumer product demands falls in line with smart home and increased connectivity needs, especially along with rapid urbanization as Internet adoption ramps up in developing countries. Latin America has nearly doubled its number of Internet users in the last five years, up to nearly 500 million people. Asia Pacific is anticipated to have 3.2 billion Internet users by 2023, representing 72% of the local population and up by 1 billion people from 2018.

What will all these trends mean for the cables and connectors industries? Most of you on this webinar already know this, but these trends include higher data speeds, smaller connection footprints, higher power and universal connectivity, along with greater reliability. The markets that we just mentioned are not the only ones that are seeing an increase in demand, with connectors being universally needed across nearly all industries. Parker Chomerics has market teams that are aligned with these markets and to meet specific industry demands.

As a reminder, please feel free to ask questions throughout this webinar using the Q and A feature, and we'll be sure to address them at the end of the presentation.

We won't read this entire table to you, but wanted to mention a few of the details associated with these connector trends. Smaller connector footprints mean not only small profile EMI solutions, but also the need to hold tight tolerances as low as about two thousandths of an inch, or zero 5 mm. This is coupled with the need for softer materials that can take on a greater compression range or decrease the compression forces experienced by sealing solutions.

Universal connectivity and higher power means that material developments must continue to scale up with performance and that solutions must be available globally, not just in North America.

We will dive into more of these trends later in the Webinar as we talk about the different types of connector challenges we are solving.

For those of you that are familiar with Chomerics products, this is a specific breakdown of materials that are often used in the connectors and cables space. On the thermal side, thermal gap pads and dispensable materials are used heavily in the optical connector space where heat dissipation is needed. These materials can come in nearly every form, factor in size to meet the application needs.

And on the other side of the house, we have our electrically conductive solutions. These include conductive elastomers that consist of an elastomer binder with a conductive particle filler and can be molded or extruded into just about any shape, be it a standard Millstack or ring or a custom multiport connector gasket for shielding an interface and providing environmental sealing. Conductive foams are used in controlled environments for applications such as backplane junctions.

Conductive foil tapes, knitted wire meshes and electrically conductive heat shrinkable tubing are all cable solutions for shielding and grounding, not only the cable harness, but the boots and interface points in assemblies.

Now let's get into the applications so you have an idea of how challenges in the connector and cable space can be met.

We'll start with different connector solutions and talk about how they differ and examples of what the challenges are. Specifically, we have connectors grouped between PCB and backplane connectors, interface and connector seals, and finally, high speed optical connectors.

After that, we'll talk about how our products can help with cable shielding.

Let's dive right into connector solutions. The first connector family we are referring to is PCV and backplane connectors. This family can include mid plane connectors as well as internal I O connectors, D shape, micro, D Nanod, D subconnectors, micro, miniature connectors, and many, many others that serve as nodes between computers, power supplies, and all kinds of auxiliary devices. Various D subconnectors can come in different shell sizes, such as nine pin, 15 pin, 37 pin, et cetera. And while many connectors are designed to have some level of built in EMI shielding, many require an additional seal.

The key technology drivers with these types of connectors are connectivity and compression force. Ideally, a solution has a high connectivity to meet low contact resistance requirements, but also low compression force requirements. These connectors may be fragile and do not always have strong mechanisms for maintaining a connection. This is where our conductive elastomer solutions come into play. By having full design control over the particles and the elastomer development, we can create solutions that meet specific needs. Low durometer materials with highly conductive particles are ideal for sealing solutions that have.

Limited space, and conductive foam solutions are ideal where environmental concerns are limited. A conductive fiber embedded in a very soft foam that is Ul 94 V Zero rated allow for high deflection ranges and excellent electrical contact. Both foams and elastomers can come in many form factors and can be die cut to meet specific connector shapes. Now let's talk about some examples of applications that we've seen. We had a server manufacturer come to us with a shielding requirement for a custom backplane application. The server would be protected from harsh conditions and the backplane has a worst case scenario operating temperature of 60 degrees Celsius. From a regulatory perspective, they needed a Ul 94 V Zero rated material and preferred a solution that could be designed around their unique connections to be made from a single piece that could be attached with pressuresensitive adhesive for ease of installation. The key designs challenge was to create a gasket that could meet a deflection range of about 50% because of their assembly tolerances and that could include some very thin walls at parts of the gasket. In this case, the best solution was Parker Chomerics Soft Shield 4850 as it is one of the only conductive foam solutions to be Ul 94 V Zero Flammability rated and could meet all other product requirements.

Another application came to us from an industrial Internet of Things, or IoT manufacturer that had shielding requirements for a set of custom gateways and nodes they were developing for a new product line. In final installation, some devices would be mounted in areas that might experience significant temperature swings and needed. Long term reliability. Because of the design, the shielding gaskets could only have a nominal thickness of a quarter millimeter, or ten thousandths of an inch. By selecting a conductive elastomer material with a small but conductive silver plated, copper particle filler and a low hardness silicon binder where you were able to manufacture sheets of material that were then die cut to meet various connector sizes, the gaskets would serve to greater around the connection. In this case, and because of the nature of the elastomeric silicone binder, we're able to provide an environmental seal and protect the interface from moisture. A single gasket replaced the need for separate environmental and conductive solutions. We also wanted to talk about interface and connector seals, especially those in high power, high performance or mission critical applications. These types of connectors can be on planes, trains, automobiles, boats, helicopters, nearly every other transportation system, and the infrastructure that supports them all.

They also exist on telecommunication base stations, on life science and medical equipment and consumer devices, and an energy storage or power grid systems. These connectors come in many shapes and sizes, and the importance of connector seals is to be able to meet the specific design constraints for connectors such as.

Mill spec and mounting flange. Connectors EMI and grounding solutions often need to be a direct drop in replacement for standard non conductive seals called out in documents such as mill DTL 38 triple nine. Other times, connectors need to be custom designs, such as the case for specific USB mountings and automotive connectors for charging connections. Most of these requirements must meet hundreds or thousands of cycles and work just as well on cycle one as on cycle 1298. As with nearly all parts of the connector space, especially when considering that volumes are often very high part to part consistency and the ability to hold very tight tolerances is a must Chaz, what kind of options exist for creating tight tolerances consistent parts from conductive elastomeric materials?

I'm glad you asked, Ben. Conductive elastomers can be custom molded using any number of molding and forming processes. These can be extruded and lathe cut for parts such as washers and flat gaskets. Still others can be die cut, water jet cut, or laser cut from compression molded sheets of elastic materials. There are many combinations of different particle and elastomer materials that can be molded, all based on the application requirements, such as contact resistance, part size, resistance to harsh chemicals or cleaning agents, and minimization of corrosion on mating substrates.

One example of a complex molded connector seal was for a large customer that was manufacturing EV charging units. These grounding seals were by no means small, but the manufacturing processes needed to be repeatable and scalable to accommodate volumes in the hundreds of thousands of pieces per year. Choosing a lower cost but high performance material met the target price point and exceeded the engineering design needs to ensure device safety. In this case, the material was our Co seal S 63 Five, a nickel plated graphite particle embedded into a silicone binder. The elastomers would be the interface that provided electrical contact, but also ensure a last line of environmental protection between the charging module and the vehicles. Because regulations vary globally, slight variations in parts were needed to be made and the parts had to be available globally.

Another example of an interface seal was for a military communication system on a mobile command unit. The devices were constantly loaded and unloaded from vehicles around the world, and the handheld units would be plugged into and unplugged from the central consoles. Interface gaskets were molded to replace the standard environmental seals and to ensure a 2.5 millimeter bonding or contact resistance was met. Specifically, a passivated silver plated aluminum particle in a fluoro silicon binder corresponding to Parker Comarx's 1298 material was chosen for its conductivity corrosion resistance and resistance to cleaning agents. Conductive elastomers have shown to last for years in field applications, ensuring reliability of mission critical units. Lastly, these types of connector seals need to provide a high degree of environmental sealing, often an IP rating of 67 or upwards. This is where our material processing capabilities come into play, and we can design parts meant to meet these tough specifications.

As data transmission speeds increase, communication technology companies are turning to fiber optic technology as a means to ensure fast speeds with limited latency. Fiber optic, or sometimes referred to simply as optical connectors, are junctions between cables consisting of optical fibers that use light transmission as opposed to an electrical signal along a traditional copper wire, relying on faster speeds of lights relative to the speed of electrons. While costs may be higher, data transmission occurs faster, more reliably over longer distances and in smaller packages.

With optical technology, however, this is where many challenges may occur. While junctions and connectors for copper cables need to simply create a continuous electrical path connection, technology for optical systems is more complicated. Optical connectors and the in terminals of the optical fibers must be far more precise, and the connectors themselves must very carefully align the fibers so that pulses of a light are transmitted without distortion.

Data creation is not stopping, and data rate or transmission speeds are not slowing down. Back in 2017, IEEE ratified standards for 204 hundred gigabit per second rates. As Ethernet development is accelerating, it's not long before we're going to see technology standards fully flushed out for 801 600 gigabits per second or 1.6 terabits per second. For applications in high performance computing. All this means that the connector technology must improve just as quickly. Connectors such as small form factor pluggable, SFP, Quad small form factor pluggable, QSFP, Octal, small form factor pluggable, OSFP, common transceiver pluggable, CXP, and many others are all designed for just these needs on.

The grounding and EMI shielding side of things. Solutions must get smaller and more conductive. Materials need to shield individual cavities and ensure grounding of the metal cages around which the optical junctions are made. Radio frequency or RF absorbers are often utilized inside the housings to ensure limited interference. All this leads to products such as conductive elastomers, small bead form and place. Gasking, electrically conductive plastics, and broadband or tuned absorbers corners, sharp edges of connector. Cages and higher temperatures have limited the use of some materials, such as foam solutions in the past. Custom molded conductive elastomers solve these challenges with molded parts that are application specific and made perfectly to the corresponding surfaces. Elastomer washers are placed at cable junctions and form and place gasketting is being. Used for cavity to cavity isolation as.

Well for complex ground path contacts. Brackets and housings are being molded completely out of electrically conductive plastics due to their shielding and RF absorbing properties and their indestructible shielding mechanism, meaning that the shielding properties are a factor of the material itself.

As these connectors process more technology, they must dissipate heat and implement thermal interface materials into the assemblies. Connectors are rated to operate from -55 degrees C on the low end up to 105 degrees C and higher thermal gap heads. Indispensable one component gels are ideal for these applications due to design flexibility and high performance. One key trend is the need for low silicone oil bleed materials, with one example of such being the newly launched therm-a-gap gel 40 NS a four watt per meter kelvin non silicone thermal gel. These thermally and electrically conductive solutions are utilized on both the male and female ends of connector interfaces.

Transitioning to Cable and Wire Solutions We will give some examples of how to solve EMI concerns in cable harnesses and assemblies.

When it comes to shielding and grounding cables, a set of different products are often needed. Because of the requirements involved, modern cables have to deal with many of the same electromagnetic or radio frequency interference concerns as the devices they connect to. Traditionally, shielding is done at the cable level instead of at the individual wire or singular conductor level. This principle is the same and that an electrically conductive material reflects radiated energy coming from the external source, such as nearby devices, power supplies, motors, et cetera. Grounding may be just as important as the metallic shielding material has the ability to conduct the energy away to a common ground.

Foil wraps and braided meshes are the most common solutions and are often used in parallel to provide the best shielding assembly. Many cable manufacturers provide these services in house and as part their premade assemblies to ensure that end customers don't have.

To deal with additional EMI concerns. However, in some cases, these solutions have to be added to assemblies and cable harnesses as part of the installation process. In still other examples, a more lightweight, flexible material is needed for shielding. Comarx has developed an electrically conductive heat shrinkable tubing that is able to shield cables without the need for mesh wrapping or foil tapes. It can be applied as any other heat shrink tubing and will provide excellent shielding and grounding to cable boots and housings.

A perfect example of where a flexible, lightweight, non outgassing EMI shielding heat shrinkable tubing could be used is in the surveillance space. Drones of all shapes and sizes have concerns with light weighting, with each ounce of weight contributing to limiting the flight time or other payload capacity. The shielded mesh is very effective at limiting noise interference to radiate through the cable harness, but can contribute too much weight as well as stiffness for cables that must be tightly packed. In this case, we utilize our Co Shrank 1061 product that takes advantage of a flexible, silver filled coating for very high shielding effectiveness.

Another example of where grounding and shielding come into play with cables and wires is related to conductive grommets and boots. These parts, often made of a conductive elastomer, are developed as a grounding feature between the housing and the cable or at the connector to cable interface. A customer asked us to design a custom profile to ensure proper grounding, and we decided on our Co Seal 1285 material, a silver plated aluminum particle and a silicone binder.

As a party note, we wanted to leave you with some final thoughts as a wrap up for this webinar. Connectors and cables come in almost limitless number of shapes, sizes, requirements and design challenges. Whether on the ground, in the air, under the water, or in really any environment or industry, there are design challenges that come with the effective transmission of data, energy or signals. From low cost, commercial, off the shelf solutions to complex custom pieces. We are here to be a resource for you and your design teams.

And with that, we hope you enjoyed this webinar about solutions in the cables and connection space. Now let's take a few minutes to answer the questions you have all submitted.

As a reminder, please feel free to continue asking questions throughout this session using.

The Q and A feature, and we will do our best to get to all the questions that have been submitted. Okay, Ben, why don't you start us off?