Medtec UK 2014 - Highlights

We recently attended the Medtec UK conference held at London's Olympia on the 14th and 15th May 2014 (Denis Healy, the Business Unit Manager of Galway can be seen on the stand pictured below) and whilst the show's overall attendance was small, the organised ‘Medtec Meetings’ format included this year, was very beneficial in pairing us up with companies that will benefit from our Parylene coating services. Jason Delaney the Galway Technical Sales Manager presented at the conference on the topic of ‘Parylene Coatings – Green Chemistry reducing friction and protecting biomaterials and medical devices’. The presentation was well received with many interesting questions and discussions after and we have included someof the questions raised below: Can Parylene provide microbial protection for implant devices? Parylene C is commonly used in implant devices, while it does not encourage bacterial growth, in that it acts as a restrictive coating for cell adhesion, it is not anti-microbial. There are anti-microbial variants of Parylene on the market however these are new and untested for implant devices. Can Parylene be used on any surface, metal, plastic or elastomer? Yes, we work with many different substrates to great success. Specific surface preparation requirements are needed in some cases to ensure good adhesion so we always treat each new project with fresh eyes, applying the experience and expertise of our process engineering team to ensure the most effective results. How can pin hole free coverage be ensured on a surface? Once the product is appropriately prepared and the coating is above 0.6µm the process of application itself ensures pin hole free coverage. The monomer is like a fog in the deposition chamber and as it forms into a polymer any and all exposed surfaces will be coated in a conformal manner, this includes the chamber as well as the product. Florescence have been used to ensure the coating is 100%. This is a two step process where the product is coated in Parylene then the Parylene in the florescent. Then using a black light any voids will show up. This has been used mainly in military electronic applications. However once they realise that a void will not occur where the process has been optimised this secondary stage becomes unnecessary and is usually abandoned. How does Parylene differ from PTFE as a coating to reduce friction? In terms for co-efficient of friction Parylene N (0.25 static and dynamic) performs as good as many PTFE coatings sitting in the middle of the range of performance. As a soft polymer Parylene does not produce particulate that has been associated with PTFE coatings and a topic of concern for the FDA. As it does not chip or flake Parylene can be higher yielding / reusable for many manufacturing aid applications so can also reduce cost in many cases as a replacement to PTFE mandrels.