Stabilant 22

[Konrad]

Stabilant 22, manufactured by Dayton Wright Electrochemical Labs, is a proprietary conductive polymer used for cleaning, lubricating, and enhancing electrical contacts/connectors. Popular with the government (in Canada, anyhow), NATO militaries, aerospace, and communications industries. High-frequency, low-frequency, AC, DC, high-voltage, low-voltage, it basically does it all. Audiophiles may be familiar with TWEEK, a much-praised and costly formulation containing very-much-diluted (<1/8th or even <1/16th concentration) Stabilant 22 as it's only active ingredient.

CAIG Laboratories offers a family of excellent DeoxIT products which are remarkably similar in form and function (and cost a bit less), although the debate over which product is superior rages eternally and both camps have diehard fanatics who swear vehemently by their preference. Admittedly, this isn't a very exciting battlefield. Kinda lame, really. But electrical nerds in the know have chosen their sides, nonetheless, and we all know how hard it is to convince a nerd that what he knows is wrong.

MG Chemicals also offers a variety of contact cleaning chemicals which work well enough, but nothing which promises to enhance electrical conductivity. Trichloroethane-based solvents used to be my fave for cleaning, but alas they're largely unavailable nasty toxic carcinogens which, again, do nothing to enhance electrical conductivity. Citrus- and pine-based solvents, detergents, and all the rest do not promise to enhance electrical conductivity either.

Stabilant 22 is a bit obscure and hard to obtain (and kinda not cheap). I buy mine from a local distributor who carries it for a small horde of CBC radio & telecommunications techs. I am told these guys apply it religiously to all their signal-carrying equipment connections. DeoxIT seems to be available at any decent store which carries electronic components, but I've never actually purchased or tried any.

As best I can determine, electrical enhancement, occurs because a conductive substance fills microscopic voids between electrical contacts. So more electrons can flow through this good conductor than can flow through a weak conductor like air/vacuum. Analogous to replacing air with a thermally conductive compound on a thermal interface. Much senseless engineering babble about electron transfer states and quantum tunnelling effects and such is offered about how these products achieve their effects, seemingly a mixture of snake oil and pretentious academia.

I can say that I've used Stabilant 22 a fair bit. It makes no real difference on shiny new metal (like USB pins and audio jacks), but I expect that it might help extend the lifespan of nice signal quality on such stuff. It makes all the world of difference on old parts, however. I have used it to revive multiple "dead" (or "borderline") RAM sticks, resurrected cantankerous oxidized USB gizmos, noticeably reduced contact sparks in old relays, and turned crusty old mechanical keyswitches into good-as-new mechanical keyswitches.

I'm wondering if coating all the pins on a shiny new processor or memory module might make any difference while overclocking. Or might it cause problems? Anyone have any thoughts about this?

[x88x]

seemingly a mixture of snake oil and pretentious academia.

That pretty much sums up my take on it... Or, to take it straight from their site:

resident potentially electrically active material which through a synergistic combination of effects enhances conductivity

...riiiiight...

My guess would be that it will help prolong the life of electrical contacts by decreasing oxidation and (maybe) spreading the initial spark gap slightly across more material (maybe....maaaaayyybbeee...ok, probably not). Any claims of "enhancing" electrical conductivity, however, I would suspect are either blatantly false or merely technically true. If there is any actual enhancement going on, I would guess that it is of the type that is measurable in the lab and nowhere else (ex, decrease in resistivity of connection of 0.5 picoOhms over a 10mm^2 contact surface).

[Konrad]

Then probably not the sort of thing which might help squeeze a few more MHz on an overclock threshold?

I already have Stabilant 22, and - snake oil pretentious engineering babble aside - I am anecdotally convinced that it does indeed have great impact on fixing up bad connections. It is absolutely wondrous when used on connections involving dissimilar metals, halting galvanic corrosion ("fretting") every time. An application leaves a nearly transparent (and slightly slippery) surface coating about 0.5-2mils thick which might help keep new contacts in new condition a bit longer. (Actually, I've never seen Stabilant 22 wear off, and people have reported it staying in place for decades - makes sense since it's basically some kind of weird conductive plastic.) A downside is that Stabilant-lubed parts seem to creep a little more persistently, I've had old Stabilant-filled PCs in which pushing all those socketed ICs back into place was a monthly chore. Hopefully this wouldn't be a real issue with modern processors and RAM, given their securely-locked socket clamping mechanisms.

Then again, I very much doubt it conducts as well as gold (let alone copper, silver, and graphene). All my pins and sockets are of course gold-on-gold, actually plated many microns thicker than usual due to enthusiastic Asus/ROG "milspec-grade" overengineering. It seems that a Stabilant 22 application would be permanent (lol, unless another cleaning solvent can remove the cured cleaning solvent?) and I definitely don't want to wreck things in some way which will actually degrade performance and reliability.

[x88x]

Oh, I don't doubt that it helps with oxidized connections, or those in danger of oxidation. Honestly it just sounds like a more expensive dielectric grease.

To be fair, I know nothing about the product other than what you have stated in this thread and what I saw in a brief perusal of their site, so I should not be taken as an authority on anything relating to it.

That being said, I very highly doubt you would see any benefit using this in a modern PC...especially since gold-on-gold connections won't oxidize anyway.

[Konrad]

Ohwells, just fielding another overclocking-stability idea. Apparently not a particularly useful one, this time around.