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Sensor gets the measure of hydrogen peroxide

A Jumo Instrument Company product story
Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team May 24, 2004

The Corrotrode is a novel sensor for measuring hydrogen peroxide concentration.

The Corrotrode is a novel sensor for measuring hydrogen peroxide concentration.

The PCB manufacturing industry employs etching baths based on sulphuric acid for various production processes, such as the manufacture of through-hole plating for multilayer PCBs (blackhole method), the "microclean" stage and pretreatment (pre-etching) during track formation.

In most cases, the etching baths consist of an approximately 8.5 % sulphuric acid (H2SO4) solution, with a hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) component of about 25g/litre.

The concentration of hydrogen peroxide, in particular, is decisive for the quality of the product, and should be kept as nearly constant as possible.

Depending on the number of boards being processed, the hydrogen peroxide concentration in the etching bath diminishes as a result of dispersal and decomposition.

Until now, maintaining this level has involved technical staff performing laboratory tests (titration of a sample with a potassium permanganate solution) to determine the hydrogen peroxide concentration.

Additional manual dosing restores the etching properties of the medium.

This isolated manual dosing can cause overdosing of hydrogen peroxide at some times, and insufficient dosing at other times.

In order to achieve a consistent rate of etching, and with it a consistent PCB quality, the hydrogen peroxide concentration should be kept constant by continuous automatic dosing.

The new, patented Corrotrode, fulfils the task of measuring the hydrogen peroxide concentration.

Evaluation and control are performed by a transmitter with integrated control contacts, and an attached dosing pump can be used to supply hydrogen peroxide from a reservoir.

Advantages of the Corrotrode measurement system include: reduced consumption of dosing agents; the avoidance of incorrect dosing; ongoing checks of the media condition can be made through displayed value; continuous automatic dosing (controlled); reduced man-hours spent on laboratory measurements; an alarm is generated if measurements drift; and an alarm is generated if there is no dosing agent (dosing time monitoring).

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