Intercept Technology

Statue of Liberty

Under natural conditions a patina takes several years to develop and waiting for nature to do the job on the statue would have taken it well beyond July 4, 1986. Bell Labs’ mission was to accomplish it in time for Mrs Nancy Reagan, wife of President Ronald Reagan, to reopen the Statue of Liberty to the public in the presence of her husband and President Francois Mitterand of France.John Franey, lead scientist of the Statue of Liberty patina project at Bell Labs, and his research team developed a way to increase the surface area of copper particles by more than 250 times so that they react with atmospheric pollutants at a correspondingly faster pace to form the required patina in time for the icon’s rededication ceremony. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

FROM PATINATING STATUE OF LIBERTY TO PROTECTING PCBAS AGAINST ATMOSPHERIC CORROSION
While the Statue of Liberty project was in progress, AT&T-Bell Labs was having a problem of its own. Its telecommunications PCBAs were experiencing rejects in excess of 60%. Initial focus was on electrostatic discharge or ESD as the suspected cause. However, investigations revealed that corrosion was the culprit. A team of scientists headed by John Franey then began the quest for a solution to stem the substantial financial losses and eliminate the delays in delivering defect-free PCBAs to customers. They concluded that that the anti-staic or pink poly bags and shielding bags used to wrap the PCBAs failed to protect the contents from corrosive gases trapped during sealing. Their mission was to develop a packaging solution which would liberate the PCBAs from these trapped corrosive substances. The result was Corrosion Intercept®, a polyethylene film with the proprietarily treated copper used in the Statue of Liberty project locked in its polymer chain during extrusion. All packaging materials for PCBAs were replaced with Corrosion Intercept® and there has been no reject thereafter.

Corrosion Intercept Bags

Corrosion Intercept Film being magnified 400X

From then on, the stage was set for a revolution in corrosion protection packaging technology. For the first time it has become possible to protect articles and do so more effectively without any coating of oils or toxic chemicals. Packaging processes can be radically simplified to improve throughput and significantly cut labour costs. Reusable Intercept solutions also drastically reduce consumption of packaging materials as well as generation of packaging waste, thereby lowering carbon footprints and enhancing “green” credentials of businesses.

How Intercept works