The Importance of Outgassing
What is outgassing?
Outgassing is the release of trapped gases from a solid or liquid material, typically when exposed to vacuum, heat, or specific environmental conditions. The common causes of outgassing are:
- Moisture or solvents trapped in materials during manufacturing.
- Thermal decomposition of polymers, adhesives, or coatings.
- Adsorbed gases on the material surface that are later released.
Why outgassing?
Outgassing is an important feature in preventing contamination of fine materials or toxication of living tissues. The following industries this is an important feature:
- Semiconductor – may cause failure to the fabrication of the wafers. This is the reason that it works in very low vacuum systems. The smaller the components and etching is than the process should be cleaner and in lower vacuum.
- Space – may cause failure to the electronics or contamination in space of the various components whether they are electronics or optics.
- Biomedical – may cause contamination of product and safety issues in the body such as releasing toxic or carcinogenic volatile organic compounds.
- Electrooptical – detector contamination causing abstraction of the field of view or other misfunctions.
Standards in each industry
As in many other areas, each industry uses different standards to test and qualify outgassing. All Acktar coating, black and white, comply with these standards.
- ASTM E-595 – Space, biomedical
- RGA – semiconductors
- Long term outgassing analysis – Space
- ECSS-Q-ST-70-02 – Space
Acktar coating outgassing
Acktar black coating, both direct coating and foils, are tested for outgassing by very rigorous tests that are accepted both by NASA and ESA. All the coating, whether it’s Magic Black direct coating or Metal Velvet foils, have very limited outgassing close to non. Over extensive tests, it was shown that all the outgassing is related to water adsorbed to the coating, indicating that the coating itself is inert.
The tests were done over time, in wide range of temperatures with similar results between different test labs. Indicating that Acktar blackest black coating, as direct coating, or coating on foils, in a perfect black coating for applications that require no outgassing.
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