Towards a stripline setup to characterise the effects of corrosion and ageing on the shielding effectiveness of EMI gaskets

This paper introduces a novel measurement set-up dedicated to the characterization of the evolution of the high-frequency shielding-effectiveness of gaskets due to corrosion and ageing. The measurement set-up is based on the recently introduced stripline set-up which has been validated previously up to 40 GHz. Compared to the original stripline set-up, the adapted set-up has a removable “clamping module” which can be easily mounted and removed from the set-up. The clamping module allows to age the gasket inside e.g. a climate chamber while always keeping the gasket under the same compression rate. As the clamping module can be made out of different materials, it allows to study the influence of shielding-effectiveness of gaskets when applied to different materials. In order to avoid parallel leakage inside the measurement set-up, a high-performant gasket needs to be compressed below the module. Based on full-wave simulations, it is shown that the shielding-effectiveness given by this gasket underneath the clamping module is the main determining factor for the dynamic range of the set-up. In addition, a first set of measurements show the validity of the measurement set-up and approach.