‘Electrically Conductive’ Film Seen Protecting Devices Against Water, Debris

Two Apple inventors devised a solution for protecting the "cavity" in a smartphone's input/output port against water and debris by coating the device's housing with “electrically conductive” film, said a patent application (2019/0069848) published Thursday at the Patent and Trademark Office. The deposited film can provide a robust “pathway” leading into and out of the housing, said the application, filed in September. The pathway “can be configured to relay sensor readings and/or power between the inside and outside of the housing," especially if it's fashioned from materials that are “unlikely to bend or deform,” it said. Housings made from glass, sapphire or ceramic substrates are more likely to hold their shape than aluminum, plus they “also have the advantage of being electrically insulating, thereby allowing the electrically conductive pathways to be deposited” directly on the substrates, it said. The film coating ideally should have a thickness between 0.5 and 10 microns, but the thickness can be “adjusted” up or down, depending how much electrical current is needed for the deployment, it said. Apple didn’t comment.