Near Atmosphere Plasma Processing Application of Anti-Tamper Coatings

The Missile Defense Agency desires the development of anti-tamper (AT) coatings to protect Critical Program Information (CPI) from unintentional transfer on acquisition programs. Engineered Coatings Inc. (ECI) has put together a highly-qualified, complementary team of materials and deposition process specialists (ECI, Southwest Research Institute, University of CA-Los Angeles), an electronic device evaluation specialist (Analytical Solutions, Inc.), and a semiconductor packaging company (VSLI) to demonstrate AT coating technology to prevent reverse engineering of critical hardware and preserve CPI. Leveraging the results of our successful Phase I program, in which thick diamondlike carbon (DLC) was demonstrated to be electrically resistive and resistant to hot-acid immersion, our team will continue the optimization of this unique DLC coating to improve its Ga-ion etch resistance. In addition, we will demonstrate a novel fluorinated-polymer-based coating deposited by an atmospheric plasma processing method, a unique out-of-vacuum deposition technique. Both of these coatings will be screened by a systematic series of removal tests, including diamond-particle abrasion, hot acid, and Ga-ion etching. In addition to AT coating optimzation, we will also demonstrate embedded sensor technology to assess the health condition of the AT coating and investigate the integration of an active-mitigation thin-film fuse technology within the AT coating.