By Michael J. Hodgin
Strategic Applications Manager
Epoxy Technology, Inc.
Epoxy
Technology offers many types of high performance, specialty adhesives for
ultrasonic technologies and devices. Here is some information on how we
provide value to sound engineers in the various industries we serve.
Industries
Ultrasound
technology is one of the most well known in the medical /healthcare
industry, not only for the fetal screening of the unborn, but for imaging in
general. It is an easy and less invasive procedure over endoscopic types.
Ultrasonics can also enable cleaning technologies for dental and electronic
devices.
Today, acoustical
engineering serves an industrial purpose for industries such as the oil and gas
industry (motion and flow), joining
technologies (welding of plastics) and consumer devices (speakerphone and
microphone components). The scientific
test industry used ultrasound for detection and ranging, whether climatic,
oceanographic, or geologic related, as well as non-destructive testing (NDT)
for inspecting cracks in the steel skeleton of a skyscraper, airplane or
semiconductor chips.
Technology
Basics
Ultrasonic technology
is achieved by means of a transducer which not only detects waves, but
creates them via an actuator (piezo-electric device or PZT). Once
the waves are made, they have to be shaped, or channeled correctly. This
is done by a lens layer. Finally, acoustic matching and backing layers
(i.e. blocking) are used in combination to produce waves of significance and
avoiding waves of waste or interference.
Epoxy
Technology Value
Our company
provides products of significant value to ultrasonic and acoustical engineers for
accomplishing their technological challenges. Our dielectric epoxy
products laminate the PZT structures to the ceramic carriers for creating the
waves. We also offer adhesives with varied specific gravities for
acoustical matching and backing (1.0 g/mL to 4.0 g/mL) and flexible potting
epoxies used at the lens level. Our thermally
conductive epoxies are used for wicking away the heat generated by many of
these ultrasonic devices.
Acoustical
characterization of our products, including impedance and velocity, has been
performed by our university partnerships, enabling >20MHz ultrasound
frequency performance and has resulted in several technical papers for review
on epotek.com. Acoustical properties of adhesives in
general, are relatively unknown across the world, and certainly not typically characterized
on data sheets. EPO-TEK adhesives can be tailored to a specific gravity requirement
and can be custom formulated to meet other desired properties.
EPO-TEK Adhesives for Acoustic /Ultrasound
Applications
