On Excess CO2 within a Hermetically Sealed 14-Pin Butterfly Package: Solubility of CO2 within Fluorocarbon Liquids

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the presence of excess CO2 found within a hermetically sealed 14-pin butterfly package. Excess CO2 within a hermetically sealed package can suggest that the internal structures of the package have degraded significantly over the lifetime of the package. The level of CO2 discovered within the butterfly package was inconsistent with the controlled sealing gas environmental composition, and the gas composition of concurrently sealed packages. A literature review of industry technical papers and academic studies show that fluorocarbon liquids preferentially absorb CO2 at levels 4-5 times greater than other gasses such as oxygen and nitrogen. Previous experimental and computational methods found that fluorocarbon liquids can absorb CO2 at levels of 1.5-1.6 mol%, which is greater than the calculated maximum amount of absorbed CO2 (0.91 mol%) found within the butterfly package. The Internal Gas Analysis (IGA) of the butterfly package confirmed that it is highly likely that when butterfly package ingested the fluorocarbon liquid, the CO2 was absorbed in solution and thus ingested into the device. Given that the butterfly package was initially filled with 12% ppmv of helium and it retained the helium at a significant level, the phenomenon of a one-way leaker preserved the evidence of CO2 absorbed in the fluorocarbon liquid.