AAPlasma is proud to announce that we have been chosen by The United States Navy to receive funding for our project (“Highly-Tunable Aging Simulation Chamber using a Non-Equilibrium Reverse-Vortex Gliding Arc Plasma”) as part of their 2021 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding.

In this project, AAPlasma will be working with The Navy to improve current aging methods used in the electronics industry by developing a gliding arc plasma system that can reliably simulate the aging effects of circuits in order to improve the standard aging evaluation processes.

Current aging evaluation methods used in the electronics industry are inherently laborious and time-consuming. Reliability testing techniques typically expose the electronic component to elevated temperatures for a period of time to accelerate the aging mechanism. And, aging testing often does not take into account the effects of prolonged exposure to the oxidative environment and to ultraviolet (UV) radiation. By constructing a gliding arc plasma system that can expose electronics components to controlled RONS, UV, and elevated temperature we are able to rapidly and precisely simulate a wide range of aging conditions for testing of electronic components. This innovative process is expected to improve the time demands observed in standard aging evaluation processes and achieve the desired aging effects in under 75% of the currently utilized aging validation process.

AAPlasma is proud to be working with The Navy to increase the speed with which they can improve our nation’s defenses, and we thank them for the opportunity to improve the electronics reliability testing landscape.