About the work

We are developing a process that lets electronics survive repeated machine washing — polymer coatings and thermoplastic film lamination applied over populated circuit boards and bonded into garments.

This is not a concept. In 2011 we built a programmable LED t-shirt that survived years of domestic machine washing. We are now converting that one-off into a controlled, documented, repeatable process we can sell — the chemistry, the machines that apply it, and the test data that proves it works.

The role, described honestly

We are a technology company. The team is mechanical engineers and embedded developers. You would be the first materials person here.

That means you own the chemistry. When you decide a cure schedule or a resin ratio, nobody here will second-guess it, because nobody here can. You choose what to try, you run it, you interpret it, and you tell us what it means.

It also means the work is structured, not loose. You will agree a written plan each week and report against it. Every experiment gets logged — materials, quantities, conditions, result, what you concluded. That record is not paperwork; it becomes the qualification evidence we eventually hand to customers, so it has to be right from the first sample.

You would not be inheriting a lab. We have budget to buy the bench you need for the early work — precision balance, curing oven, vacuum degassing, adhesion testing, surface energy verification — and you would specify what we buy. Anything needing institutional-grade instrumentation gets outsourced to a NABL-accredited lab per sample. Expect an empty table in week one and a working bench by week three, built by you.

What you'll actually do in the first three months

- Set up the bench and define what we purchase
- Formulate and screen epoxy, polyurethane and thixotropic dam materials — weighing, mixing,



degassing, cure scheduling
- Prepare test coupons and run adhesion testing (pull-off per ASTM D4541, T-peel per ASTM D6862/D3167)
- Run wash-durability and humidity exposure trials and record them properly
- Surface preparation and surface energy verification before lamination
- Help design experiments, and keep records that will still stand up two years from now

What we're looking for

- B.Tech / M.Sc / M.Tech in Polymer Science, Paint & Coatings Technology, Chemical Engineering, or Chemistry with an organic or polymer emphasis. CIPET, ICT and university polymer/coatings backgrounds especially welcome.
- Genuine wet-lab hands. You have personally weighed, mixed and cured a thermoset — not only read about one, and not only submitted samples for someone else to test.
- Working grasp of stoichiometry, cure kinetics, Tg, and filler loading effects
- Comfortable being the only person in the room who understands the chemistry, and equally comfortable saying "I don't know yet, here's how I'll find out"
- Meticulous records. Here, an unrecorded parameter is a lost experiment.
- Discretion. This work is protected as trade secrets, and you would be trusted with commercial information and contacts from your first week.
- Protected handling of isocyanates, amine hardeners and solvents, with PPE discipline you don't need to be reminded about

Useful, not required: PCB or electronics assembly exposure · conformal coating or potting · hands-on FTIR, DSC, rheometer, or tensile tester · DOE or statistics coursework

Details

- On-site at our Hyderabad office, every working day. Not remote, not hybrid.
- Stipend ₹12,000/month, reviewed at three months
- Start within one week of offer
- Duration [3 months] extendable to 6 months
- Process: short call → in-person conversation at our office
- NDA and IP assignment signed before lab access

📌 Materials Science / Polymer Chemistry Intern — Electronics Encapsulation R&D (Hyderabad, On-site)
🏢 Neonflake
📍 Hyderabad