Interview
Stepping towards waterproof devices
CIE editor, Amy Wallington, talks to P2i Group CEO, Ady Moores, about their innovative technology that protects devices from water damage
I
n the electronics industry, we are used to everything becoming smaller, faster and lighter. However, a new trend is taking
centre stage: waterproofing. Thousands of mobile phones are broken due to water damage every year. It is no surprise then that manufacturers in the consumer electronics industry are beginning to invest in waterproof technologies to protect devices such as mobile phones. P2i is a company that is currently applying its innovative water resistant nano-coating solution to more than 175 million smartphones, making them world leaders in the field. Ady Moores, Group CEO, said: “The technology itself was a eureka moment that happened when our CTO, Dr Stephen Coulson, was doing his PhD at Durham University on ‘liquid repellent surfaces’ in the late 90s. At the time, the laboratory within Durham University that Stephen was working in, was being sponsored by the UK’s Ministry of Defence and as a consequence, Stephen spent the next five years developing the machinery for the technology and also filing all the patents.”
In 2004, P2i was spun out from the
Ministry of Defence and came into existence as a standalone commercial entity backed by Venture Capital. Ady continued: “Over the years, the company has looked at a number of different markets for the technology and we have taken on a significant amount of equity finance. Since 2004 up to the current date, the company has raised over £70m of equity finance so the business has been extremely well funded from its shareholding backers and we have seen a significant uptake in our commerciality of the business. “We have had a really big rollout in the consumer electronics area and our main focus today is mobile phones. We still have military customers and customers from other industries but we have really moved into the consumer electronics world.” With electronics becoming smaller, faster and lighter, it is important that the technology does not make a huge impact in terms of the size and weight. Ady explains: “To give you a flavour of what the technology actually is, we lay down an invisible coating that is between 20 and 40 nanometres thick; that’s about 1000 times
thinner than a human hair. What we lay down at the surface level becomes part of the media that we apply it to. For example, in a mobile phone, we lay it down at the very back end of the production line so we treat the finished phone. Our technology is a vacuum based plasma technology, and because it’s under vacuum we insert our chemistry in as a vapour, so therefore it gets inside the mobile phone as well as on the outside.”
P2i have used a tissue to demonstrate this technology. “If you put water on a treated tissue, it beads up on the surface. This very thin coating that we put down enables the water to bead up and roll away effectively so the water never comes into contact with the electronics and as we are all aware, electronics and water do not marry up very well.
“This thin coating doesn’t change the look or feel of the device so from the human eye the mobile phone and all the properties of the surface look the same but you’ve got this coating down that enables the water to bead up and roll away.” Last year, P2i processed 70 million phones and are expecting to process in excess of 100 million phones this year. Ady went on to say: “We have been able to develop a mass scale technology now that goes into our customer’s factories, keeps up with their production lines and enables our customers to benefit hugely from a reduction in their field failure return rates from water damage.”
In the mobile phone industry, the 12 June 2017 Components in Electronics
second most significant issue as to why people return phones is water damage; the first being people dropping their phones and cracking the screens. It is hoped that this return rate will fall with the implementation of this technology. It’s important to point out here that this technology is not actually waterproof, it’s water repellent. “Our technology stops around 40 to 50 per cent of all water damaged phones being returned by laying down our coating,” explained Ady. “The industry is moving on to waterproof mobile phones and Samsung and Apple have bought what we call IPX7 certified phones out into the market and they are doing it by putting a mechanical solution in the device. They are putting in o-rings and glues and strengthening the cases so they can do all these things. It’s very expensive for all the big brands to do as well as being very inconvenient because they lose the ability to have freedom when they design because they have to be constantly thinking about building in the areas to put these thin rubbers and the glues in.” 2016 was a breakthrough year for P2i as it saw them become profitable by generating £18m worth of revenue. Ady commented: “2016 was our transformational year and in our current year we are looking for significant growth again and we have made a very good start to 2017 and are ahead on all our financial metrics.” P2i often rely on funding to keep them going and they have just received £10m
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