Indium Blog

Bonding to Non-Metallic Surfaces: Use This Unique Indium Property to Your Advantage

Category:
  • Indium

  • Solder mask on PCBs is applied to keep solder off of areas around the printed circuit board’s contacts, using the principal that solder will not bond to non-metallic surfaces. As some of us can attest – solder can be difficult to use even on certain metallic surfaces! Although that is true for most alloys, Indium has a unique ability to bond to some non-metallic surfaces like glass and ceramics.

    This is important for you if you need to create any of the following:

    1) A hermetic seal between a glass lens and a metal housing

    2) A metal-to-glass tube seal

    3) A rework-able glass to glass bond

    4) A sputtering target, consisting of a ceramic and a metal backing plate

    5) Bonding pins to a ceramic connector

    If you have a challenging non-metallic bonding application, contact us. We solve these type of problems often, and we most likely have a solution waiting for you!

    This post is part of the “6 Strange Properties of Indium” series.

    Authored by previous Indium Application Manager Jim Hisert