White PaperMaterials
Potting and Encapsulation for Sensors
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The range of performance and processing requirements facing sensor designers and manufacturers is vast. Suitable adhesive systems are readily available to meet those demands. Using different fillers, manufacturers can create adhesive compounds that are optimized for specific combinations of performance characteristics like electrical or thermal conductivity, chemical resistance, and stability as well as processing characteristics like viscosity, work time and cure time. Learn more about the fundamental role that epoxy and silicone compounds play in diverse sensor devices.
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Overview
This Master Bond White Paper highlights the critical role adhesive compounds, especially epoxy and silicone systems, play in sensor fabrication and performance across diverse applications including IoT, aerospace, medical, and industrial sectors. Adhesives are essential for bonding, protecting, and stabilizing sensor components, ensuring device reliability amid harsh environmental, thermal, mechanical, and chemical stresses.
Advanced sensors measure a wide range of physical and dynamic properties—temperature, pressure, acceleration, rotation—often integrating multiple sensing modalities for complex measurements like biometrics and inertial tracking. Adhesives improve manufacturing by enabling multi-material precision assemblies, serving as bonding agents, underfill encapsulants, potting compounds, or conformal coatings.
The paper details examples of specialized adhesive applications tailored to meet rigorous, varied performance and handling requirements. For temperature sensors, adhesives with high thermal conductivity and low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) are critical to avoid measurement errors and maintain bond integrity despite substrate differences or thermal cycling. Honeywell, for instance, used Master Bond EP30LTE-LO epoxy to bond a MEMS temperature sensor directly to an ASIC, enhancing accuracy through high thermal conductivity and low CTE.
In aerospace, adhesives must combine thermal conductivity, electrical insulation, mechanical strength, and cryogenic stability over broad temperature ranges. GL Scientific selected Master Bond EP37-3FLFAO for bonding sensor modules in adaptive optics instruments requiring temperature control from 4K to 250°C.
Electrical conductivity and workability are addressed in assembling pyroelectric sensors using conductive epoxy (Master Bond EP21TDCN) for reliable electrical connections, crucial in automated fabrication processes.
Adhesives meeting stringent standards for low outgassing (ASTM E595, NASA) and biocompatibility (USP Class VI, ISO 10993-5) enable sensitive aerospace systems and implantable biosensors, maintaining performance and safety.
Looking forward, sensor advances involving graphene, carbon nanotubes, and nanocomposites will drive the development of new adhesive compounds that fulfill emerging needs for conductivity, biocompatibility, and manufacturability in smart, nanoscale sensors, textiles, and 3D-printed devices.
For technical inquiries or product information, Master Bond experts can be contacted at +1 (201) 343-8983.