3M is a company with diverse product lines. They manufacture a variety of different tapes, thermally conductive tapes, VHB Tapes, and more. Many of their tapes are catered towards electronic markets, as handheld devices become a commonplace item in all of our lives. In this blog, we will discuss the EMI/RFI absorber tapes.
Properties of EMI Absorber Tapes
These tapes are made up of essentially polymer resin with magnetic metal flake fillers. The magnetic metal flakes attenuate unwanted signals in their applications. Naturally, all of these EMI Absorbing Tapes come with acrylic pressure-sensitive adhesive on one side. Of course, the acrylic backings are non-conductive.This allows for ease of application. In these electrical applications, shorting of circuits is a concern so the volume resistivity of each of these tapes is higher. These tapes cover the broadband radio frequency range. This is similar to most of the other RF absorbers that NEDC deals with. One thing to note with all the EMI/RFI Absorber tapes, HF indicates “Halogen Free” per IEC 61249-2-21. As with any absorbing material, thickness comes into play as well- this determines its true absorbing ability. The datasheets below show reflection, and power loss. For this reason, there are many thicknesses of these materials available.
3M EMI/RFI Absorber Tapes:
There are few different families of EMI Absorber Tapes available:
AB5000HF – less than 1 GHz Range
AB5010HF(.004’’), AB5020HF(.008’’), AB5030HF(.011’’), AB5050HF(.020’’), AB5100HF(.040’’)
AB7000HF- 50 MHz to 10 GHz Range
AB7010HF(.004’’), AB7020HF(.008’’), AB7030HF(.011’’), AB7050HF(.020’’)
NEDC is an authorized 3M converter, meaning we have access to all of these tapes directly from 3M Company. NEDC die-cuts and otherwise convert these tapes into custom shapes/parts for its customers. In addition, NEDC can provide these tapes on a liner, “kiss-cut” for ease of peel and stick operations during assembly. For more information on absorber tapes, or you believe you have an application that could utilize them, please contact sales@nedc.com.