Packaging materials are usually plastics. This applies whether the packaging is for a semiconductor device, a carton of margarine or the retail wrapping of a washing machine. Plastics usually easily become charged with static electricity and tend to retain this charge for long periods. Retained static charge attracts atmospheric dust and dirt, which spoils the appearance of items at their point of sale and makes hands dirt in handling. It attracts thin materials, which can make handling difficult. It can cause damage to sensitive semiconductor devices and fail to protect them from other static charges and nearby transient electric fields.
This meeting will be relevant to people involved with the design, manufacture and handling of packaging materials in the food product, pharmaceutical and retail selling industries, to peole involved with the converting and printing of packaging and to people handling the packaging for microelectronic devices and assemblies.
The meeting of the Static Electrification Group of the Institute of Physics will be held in December 1999 at the Institute of Physics in London. It will examine the range of ways static causes problems with packaging, how materials for packaging may be modified or treated to reduce problems and how the relevant characteristics of materials may be measured.
Please contact Dr J. N. Chubb at John Chubb Instrumentation (Tel: 01242 573347 Fax: 01242 251388 email: jchubb@jci.co.uk) or Prof P. Kathirgamanathan, School of EEIE, South Bank University, 103 Borough Road, London SE1 0AA (email: kathirp@sbu.ac.uk) for further details and to discuss contributions to the meeting programme. Details of the meeting and the programme will be posted on the JCI Website at: http://www.jci.co.uk/IoPDec99.html and will be available from the Institute of Physics (Tel: 0171 470 4800)
