carnauba-wax-used-in-epoxy-mold-compound

What percentage of Carnauba Wax Spray is used in Epoxy Mold Compound?

As described in the arti­cle “What is the right appli­ca­tion for Car­nau­ba Wax Aerosol Spray?”, car­nau­ba wax is described as a nat­ur­al wax used as a mold release agent for epoxy mold com­pounds. The arti­cle also out­lines that car­nau­ba wax in its sol­id form is also used as a raw mate­r­i­al in the man­u­fac­tur­ing of epoxy mold compounds.

What is the composition of Epoxy Molding Compounds?

There is only a very small per­cent­age of car­nau­ba wax used in the man­u­fac­ture of epoxy mold com­pounds used for inte­grat­ed cir­cuit (IC) and pas­sive device man­u­fac­tur­er. By far, the largest com­po­si­tion of epoxy mold com­pound by weight is the filler, which accounts for some­where between 60–90% of the composition.

After this, the epoxy resin and the hard­en­er com­plete the bulk of the com­po­si­tion account­ing for anoth­er 15–40%. Final­ly, cat­a­lysts, pig­ments, flame retar­dants, low-stress absorbers, adhe­sion pro­mot­ers, cat­a­lysts, cou­pling agents and release agents com­bined mak­ing up less than 10% of the total com­po­si­tion. Of this, car­nau­ba wax con­sists of less than 0.5% of the raw ingre­di­ents by weight and its pri­ma­ry func­tion is mold release. To recap, the raw mate­ri­als, list­ed in decreas­ing order of weight % used are:

  1. Filler
  2. Epoxy Resin
  3. Hard­en­er
  4. Flame retar­dants
  5. Stress Absorbers
  6. Adhe­sion Promoters
  7. Cat­a­lyst
  8. Pig­ment
  9. Cou­pling Agent
  10. Car­nau­ba Wax used for Mold release

Each of these raw mate­ri­als has spe­cif­ic func­tions with­in the whole of the epoxy mold­ing compound.

The function of Carnauba Wax Mold Release

Car­nau­ba Wax with­in the Epoxy Mold Com­pound has two main functions:

  • Act­ing as a flow pro­mot­er with­in the com­pound itself
  • Pro­vid­ing a mold release for the epoxy mold com­pound in the mold cav­i­ty and chase

In an ide­al sit­u­a­tion, no addi­tion­al mold release would be required, but as explained in What is the right appli­ca­tion for Car­nau­ba Wax Aerosol Spray? there are sim­ply too many non-ide­al sit­u­a­tions which neces­si­tate addi­tion­al Car­nau­ba Wax Aerosol Spray. To under­stand a lit­tle more, let’s take a look at how the car­nau­ba wax func­tions as a mold release agent.

How Carnauba Wax Works as an Epoxy Mold Release Agent

Schematic of Carnauba Wax Before Epoxy Mold Compound MoldingAs can be seen in the first schemat­ic (click on it for larg­er view), before mold­ing, the car­nau­ba wax, rep­re­sent­ed by the shark-tooth shaped lines are ran­dom­ly dis­trib­uted with­in the epoxy mold com­pound matrix.Schematic of Carnauba Wax in the Mold After Molding

In the sec­ond schemat­ic (again, click on it for larg­er view), you can see that the car­nau­ba wax when heat­ed escapes to the out­side of the matrix, allow­ing the epoxy mold com­pound to release from the mold chase inside.

CAPLINQ is a spe­cial­ty chem­i­cals, plas­tics, and prod­ucts com­pa­ny that offers a vari­ety of epoxy mold release agents includ­ing MJ Gor­don Per­masil #909C, Chem­linq MRE-C909, and Lin­qSil S‑100 mold release spray. Please con­tact us if you have any oth­er ques­tions about Car­nau­ba Wax.

About Chris Perabo

Chris is an energetic and enthusiastic engineer and entrepreneur. He is always interested in taking highly technical subjects and distilling these to their essence so that even the layman can understand. He loves to get into the technical details of an issue and then understand how it can be useful for specific customers and applications. Chris is currently the Director of Business Development at CAPLINQ.

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