Success Stories

Hermeticity

Challenge: Vacuum pressure gauge requires leak rates less than 1 X 10-10 std cc/sec Helium at 14.7 psi.
Solution: Tekna Seal's proprietary oxide-free sealing process for glass seals allows us to exceed this requirement without the expense of a ceramic-to-metal feedthrough.

Pressure

Challenge: Application required hermetic seal to retain pressure in excess of 25,000 psi.
Solution: Tekna Seal helped the customer identify the failure mode in their existing design which allowed the customer to redesign their product to withstand test pressures significantly greater than the specification required.

Material Choices

Challenge: Customer requires hermetic seals in titanium housing. Housing must be free and clear of additional oxide or nitride to be suitable for welding.
Solution: Tekna Seal's proprietary oxide-free hermetic sealing process in combination with silica-free glass creates a hermetic seal to titanium surface without additional oxide or nitride required.

Challenge: Customer design requires higher current carrying capacity than standard glass seal pins allow without overheating.
Solution: Seals were made with Copper pins using newly available glass with a higher coefficient of thermal expansion than traditionally available glass materials.

Challenge: Pins must provide corrosion resistance without plating.
Solution: Hermetic seals were made with stainless steel pins using newly available glass with a higher coefficient of thermal expansion than traditionally available glass materials.

Challenge: Photonics manufacturer wishes to package a long attenuator crystal that has a coefficient of thermal expansion incompatible with the standard Kovar package material.
Solution: Glass-to-metal sealed packages using metal injection molded housings with alloys custom tailored to the expansion rate of the crystal.

High Temperature

Challenge: Application requires seals to withstand temperatures in excess of 500° C.
Solution: Seals were made using crystallizing ceramic glass. Crystals reinforce the glass allowing for reliability of the seal up to 600° C.

Features, Fabrications

Features Cast into Glass

Challenge: Interconnection requires keyed orientation integrated into the glass seal.
Solution: A ceramic doped glass with a much higher working point temperature than the sealing glass allows for the key feature to be economically molded into shape.

Metal Injection Molded

Challenge: Package geometry requires complex machined features in Kovar.
Solution: The housing was manufactured as a molded package, eliminating the need for machining. This significantly reduced the cost of the package. www.flomet.com

Stamping

Challenge: Customer's design required thick and thin sections incoporated into the stamped housing.
Solution: Tekna Seal manufactured the feedthrough from two inexpensive stampings simultaneously brazed and glass sealed into a single robust assembly.

Brazed Components

Challenge: Customer requires a low thermal expansion die mount surface in a corrosion resistant stainless steel housing.
Solution: Tekna Seal's oxide- free process allows us to simultaneously braze and glass seal, providing a low cost solution for combining dissimilar material properties.

Integrated ESD Protection

Challenge: Manufacturer of pyrotechnic devices required suppression of ESD threats during assembly of their initiators.
Solution: Tekna Seal incorporated a gas arrestor integral to the hermetic seal providing protection in all stages of manufacture of the initiator. See US Patent no. 5768083 and 5726854.