Investigations on different epoxies for electrical insulation of microflex structures.

The microflex interconnection (MFI) technique is often used to connect electrically and mechanically thin film ribbons or electrodes with a solid substrate like screen printed ceramics. For stabilization reasons epoxy is used to fix the MFI structure. As epoxy tends to form cracks when surrounded by water or electrolytes we are eager to find an epoxy which provides sufficient insulation between the single channels of the MFI structure also in a moist surrounding. Therefore we designed a device to investigate the insulating properties of different epoxies (Uhu Plus Endfest 300, Epo-Tek 353ND and 353ND-T) immersed in saline solution. For comparison reasons we use as well only silicone rubber (Nusil MED-1000) instead of epoxy. We performed the experiment for 23 weeks at 60 °C, which corresponds to 26 months at body temperature. The epoxy of preference is the Epo-Tek 353ND-T as it develops no failures and insulates all channel pairs of the MFI structures electrically over the whole period of experiment.