Can autonomous AI agents be sued or prosecuted for hacking? It’s no longer a question for sci-fi movies. It’s a question human lawyers and judges may soon have to grapple with.

Under current U.S. hacking laws, a human can face criminal charges for breaking into someone else’s computer without permission. But when an AI agent autonomously hacks into a company’s computers, determining who is liable is much murkier.

The surprise admissions by OpenAI and Anthropic that their unreleased AI models autonomously hacked into several companies have upended our understanding of America’s computer hacking laws, prompting discussions over whether the companies could face legal reprisals. 

To recap: In June, OpenAI admitted that one of its unreleased AI models broke out of its containment — so to speak — and onto the internet, allowing it to hack into the AI dataset platform Hugging Face. Anthropic recently conducted an internal review and discovered its own model also hacked three separate companies.

While both companies described how their AI models gained unauthorized access to other companies during internal testing gone awry, the distinct lack of direct human involvement at the time of the hacks makes all the difference — legally speaking, at least.

The hacks also raise new questions about what liability and consequences other AI makers might face if their own models are misused to hack into other companies.

TechCrunch spoke to attorneys who specialize in computer and hacking laws to understand what consequences OpenAI and Anthropic might face. The potential fallout ranges from federal hacking charges to civil litigation brought by the companies that were hacked. 

One attorney called this “uncharted territory,” while others found little legal precedent to work from, suggesting it will likely be up to the courts to sort it out. Victim companies would likely have to develop novel legal arguments based on laws that were written decades before the arrival of large language models (LLMs).

As of this writing, Anthropic hasn’t disclosed which three companies its LLM hacked, none of the victims has publicly identified itself. We don’t know if they are considering legal action. In an interview with CNN, Hugging Face’s chief executive Clem Delangue said he doesn’t want to sue OpenAI. But he argued that companies should be held responsible.

Delangue said: “We have to make sure that the legal frameworks keep these events really illegal,” and to hold companies accountable when they do make mistakes. “Otherwise we’re going to end up in a very different world.”

These hacks are unlikely to be the last. What are the likely outcomes, and how could the aftermath play out?

Can AI commit crimes?

The U.S. does not have a federal law covering liability for AI harms, like cyberattacks, so any legal case would have to draw on existing federal or state laws. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), enacted in 1986 and criticized pretty much ever since, is the main statute that covers computer hacking crimes. 

One of the key concepts of the CFAA is the intent to break into a computer without permission. If a hacker knowingly accesses a computer without “authorization” from the owner, that is almost certainly a crime. 

The problem with the OpenAI and Anthropic hacks is that the hacker was not a human, but an LLM. 

Can AI agents be considered people for the purpose of establishing intent? According to Ahmed Ghappour, a cybersecurity and AI attorney with years of experience litigating hacking and computer-fraud cases, the answer is no. AI agents are not like company employees, so they cannot be prosecuted, because a victim would likely fail to argue that the LLMs intentionally hacked them.

Andrew Crocker, the surveillance litigation director at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, told TechCrunch that he was skeptical an AI agent could be proven to have had intent when it carried out a hack. 

The Department of Justice could theoretically bring criminal charges under the CFAA, but one former litigator specializing in computer law also expressed doubts.

Prosecutors might have an easier case if any of the cyberattacks had targeted critical infrastructure, which would have caused greater real-world disruption and more tangible harm than copying data from a company’s internal database.

It is also plausible that if the attacks were carried out by a Chinese AI model maker, for example, the DOJ would have a greater appetite to file charges under the CFAA than against AI companies on its own doorstep.

Can victims sue?

Congress has amended the CFAA over the years to allow victims to sue hackers to hold them liable and recover damages through civil lawsuits.

The core argument the victims could make, Ghappour told TechCrunch, is that OpenAI and Anthropic (and potentially the companies that helped conduct the evaluations) were negligent in how they set up and ran the tests. The argument hinges on whether the companies failed to implement adequate safeguards to prevent the AI agents from getting on the internet; failed to limit what targets they could go after; and did not properly monitor what the agents were doing. 

To argue this, a victim company would have to show that it suffered damages because of that negligence, such as data destruction caused by a hack. Some legal commentators have also argued that proving this could be difficult.

In Anthropic’s case, its failure to monitor and stop what its LLM was doing is particularly egregious because the company did not discover the three breaches for months, and was only able to do so after it launched an investigation following news of OpenAI’s AI agent hacking Hugging Face. 

If victims were to argue negligence, intent does not matter as much.

“The model is the company’s tool,” said Ghappour. “You don’t get to deploy something capable of breaking into systems and then disown where it goes,” he added, explaining that the model’s autonomy is what causes harm, and it should not be a shield against liability.

What could be worse for OpenAI and Anthropic, according to Ghappour, is that both companies admitted they have built safeguards to limit their models’ hacking abilities. These safeguards are strict enough that both defensive and offensive cybersecurity researchers have griped about them for months. Intentionally switching off those guardrails during these tests could bolster the argument of negligence.

Ghappour is so confident in these arguments that, if he were representing any of the victims in these cases, he said it would be a “no brainer” to file a lawsuit against OpenAI or Anthropic. At the very least, he explained, he would send letters demanding that the AI companies preserve and share all of their internal records and documents about the hacks, such as incident response reports, and quantify the costs they incurred because of the breaches. 

Then, if negotiations with the AI giants failed, he would bring a civil lawsuit based on the CFAA arguing that the AI companies were negligent, and violated privacy and confidentiality.

Where does that leave us?

For now, it’s a game of chicken. 

If one of the hacked companies files a civil suit, we will see where the legal case — and the law — lead. If prosecutors decide to bring criminal charges, unlikely as that may be, the outcome could have profound consequences and a potential chilling effect on security research and AI development more broadly.

Without any federal or nationwide AI liability laws, anyone bringing a lawsuit would have to make an entirely novel argument based on existing statutes. It would ultimately be up to a judge or jury to decide whether an AI company broke the law.

In place of a federal law, some states such as California, New York, and Rhode Island are rolling out laws with the goal of enshrining a simple principle: If an AI system or agent does something a human could be held liable for, then the companies that made the AI system should be held liable. These laws are not focused specifically on hacking, but on broader concepts of responsibility and safety in various situations.

As for who is to blame for an AI model’s cyberattack? Morally speaking, the responsibility rests with the executives who run the companies. Legally speaking, though? We’ll have to wait until someone sues to find out.

Photo credit: Reddit
Mark Russinovich spends his days shaping the future of Microsoft Azure. On nights and weekends he still finds time to make Windows do things it was never meant to do. His latest experiment turns Microsoft Paint into a living monitor for the original DOOM.

DoomPaint plays the actual game, whereas ViZDoom is just a research engine based on the ZDoom code, booting up an authentic shareware copy of DOOM 1 and then proceeding at the classic 35 ticks per second. Don’t even get me started on the engine, which remains buried in the background the entire time. Each frame is transformed into a device-independent bitmap and copied to the clipboard as OLE data. Then it’s flung straight into an open Paint canvas, with no regard for where it came from.

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Paint just receives the next image and pastes it into the canvas, just like any other standard paste operation. Russinovich offered a brilliant answer for this: “Paint renders the game but does not compute it. Paint computes nothing. Paint has never computed anything. That’s the joke.” The pasting action must be consistent and fast enough to create the illusion of playability. Synthetic Ctrl-V keys generally work on most paint builds, but if they fail silently, the code falls back to UI Automation, temporarily displaying the Edit menu. We have to deal with Paint reading the clipboard stuff on its own schedule, so the project simply treats it as a regular OLE object, which owns the bits until it decides to send them over to Paint. This helps to keep all of that “can’t perform that operation” nonsense from bringing the game to a halt in the middle of a demon combat.

DOOM runs in its native 320 x 200 resolution, allowing you to get the full 35 frames per second on any modern system. Moving up to larger resolutions, such as 640 x 400, keeps the frame rate workable, but it relies a little more heavily on Paint’s ability to handle the additional pixels. However, frame rate is never forced; the game simply runs as quickly as Paint or the engine will allow it. Sound effects are routed through an upgraded OpenAL layer, while Bobby Prince’s original tracks are extracted from the WAD and converted from MUS to MIDI before being routed to the Windows sequencer. Both systems are intelligent enough to detect when an audio track goes dead.

Keyboard input is intercepted at a low level, so WASD, arrow keys, the fire button, and so on all make it to the engine without interfering with any of Paint’s own shortcuts. Surprisingly, Ctrl-Z remains undisturbed. Because each time a frame is ‘pasted’, it is practically a document edit, therefore in the event of a crash or whatever, you can just undo your way back to life. Get slain in a corner full with imps, and with a few undos, you’re good as new. File > Save, on the other hand, creates a standard PNG image with no fuss or bustle because Paint only knows that the player has painted it. They kind of have. The full code and all relevant files are available on GitHub under an MIT license for anyone curious about how far a clipboard and Paint can be pushed together.
[Source]

Apparently you all love lasers just as much as we do. We put out a challenge to use, build, or otherwise abuse our favorite coherent light sources, and you responded. Some of the projects had been in the works for quite a while and were ridiculously polished, some were whipped together on the fly just for the contest, and we truly enjoyed both.

We only have three $150 DigiKey gift certificates to give out, though, so without further ado, we present to you…

The Winners

Our judges’ favorite project was [Jacob]’s CubeRaman, and it’s not hard to see why. A Raman spectrometer shines laser light at an object and catches the reflection, filtering all of the original laser wavelength out. What remains are photons that have interacted with electrons in the atoms that make up the target itself, and come back at a shifted wavelength. Comparing the spectrum of this Raman reflection with a database of known spectra tells you what it is made of.

This is by no means an easy project, but [Jacob]’s documentation, careful selection of parts to buy used and parts to build, coupled with a clever 3D-printed mounting system make it plausible for the home gamer. We love seeing out-of-reach science gear brought into reach, and we know we’ll be keeping an eye on this project in the future.

Next up, we had [Kyle Mayer]’s Measuring Microns with Lasers, which is a DIY laser rangefinder, but for measuring very small distances — under a centimeter — with precision. Like many laser optical rangefinders, this bounces a laser off the target and collects the light on a line sensor, using the angle at which the light returns to figure out how far the target is.

[Kyle]’s implementation uses three of these measurement heads and produces a reading that is precise down to 0.25 μm nearly 5,000 times per second. This puts it in league with devices that you have to request a quote for, so you probably don’t want to have to afford them.

And finally, an art project! [AJRussell]’s Glow Engine is a beautiful take on a familiar laser trick: shining a blue laser at glow-in-the-dark materials to leave persistent traces. Scan the laser over the phosphorescent screen, and you have something like a CRT, only in [AJ]’s case, a very very slow CRT.

The beauty here lies in the details. [AJ] chose high quality strontium aluminate for the glowing, and used high resolution encoders and the open-source SimpleFOC motor driver firmware to get the spots in the right place. Snippets of old hard drive platters make fantastic mirrors. All in all, a super implementation that we’re pretty sure looks even better in the real world.

Honorable Mentions

We always come up with a few honorable mention categories to give you all some inspiration. And it also gives us a nice excuse to feature some more sweet projects.

Lightshow

We wanted to see pretty displays of laser light. [Daniel Ross]’s Laser Oscilloscope 360 not only draws out pretty waveforms, but it does so in prime steampunk style. Both [Owen Trueblood]’s Laser Cyanotypes and [GRNCH]’s Scored: Laser Woodblock Prints flip the script, making beautiful images from lasers, but not the way we intended. Kudos.

DIY

We wanted to see what laser-involved projects you were building yourselves, from scratch. While we were shocked that we had no TEA laser entries, [Armin Bindzus]’s Versatile Laser Processing Machine more than made up for it. It’s a pulsed-laser do-everything machine that we’re absolutely jealous to see made real. And if you don’t think there’s some real laser DIY going on here, you’ve never maintained a q-switched diode pumped Nd:YAG laser.

With Remaining Eye

This was our catch-all category for doing basically anything else with lasers. It turns out that what you all mostly wanted to do was science. [Matt Venn] used a fast-rise-time laser driver to Measure the Speed of Light at Home, and got damn good results considering the 2 m baseline. [Tim] put together a 3D Printed Optical Cavity interferometer on a budget.

But it wasn’t all labcoats and pocket protectors. [WeldingRod1]’s Laser Bandsaw is basically as bad an idea as it sounds like it is. Please, please wear eye protection!

Laser Oscilloscope 360′

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Laser Cyanotypes

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Scored: Laser Woodblock Prints from Generative Art

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Versatile Laser Processing Machine

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Measuring the speed of light at home

3D Printed Optical Cavity

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Laser Bandsaw

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Thanks again to DigiKey for sponsoring the contest. We’re sure that our winners will find whatever they need for their next laser project.

Danielle Egan and Athena Leong know how to have fun. Between the two of them, they’ve organized a citywide scavenger hunt in San Francisco and turned a viral prank into an exclusive NYC restaurant for a night. They even created an alternative to a running club for socializing, dubbed a “sit club,” where people just bring their chairs and relax. Now, with their new startup, Outernet, the co-founders want to help others add more fun to their lives, too.

The app’s name is inspired by the concept of using the internet as a tool to get you to go outside, hence “outernet.” It’s one of several apps that helps you save the things you see online — like local events, restaurants or bars to try, or other city landmarks — and turn them into a list of to-dos for exploring the world around you.

Outernet’s pitch is that instead of simply liking a post about something you’d like to see or do on social media, you should share it to its app, where it will track the activity or place you want to visit for you in an organized interface. (Invite codes to try the app for yourself are at the bottom of this post).

What makes Outernet different from others in the space, like Albo, Tabi, or Plotline, is who’s behind it: founders who have devoted much of their time to playfulness and having fun offline. Now, they want to bring that same spirit into their app.

“In my free time, I’m very passionate about getting people to go outside and do things,” explains Egan, whose offline persona is quite different from her former day job working in product BizOps at LinkedIn. “I just love capturing attention in unexpected ways and delivering delightful things.” She says the thesis behind the app is becoming the “motivation engine for IRL” — something that removes the friction between wanting to do something and actually going out to do it.

Outernet taps into an already common consumer behavior. As you scroll TikTok and Instagram, you’re often inspired by a creator’s post, so you’ll save it in the app as a reminder. But then you promptly forget about the idea as you continue to consume more content. Outernet solves this problem by keeping track of the things you want to do or places you want to visit, all in one place.

To save a post to the app, you’ll tap the share option from the source app, like TikTok or Instagram, then scroll through the list of places you can share to until you find Outernet. You can also paste in social media URLs or website links directly into the app, or upload a photo of something you see, like a flyer.

To organize everything, Outernet leverages AI to pull relevant information, like the date, time, location, and details about the activity you want to try or the location of a place you’d like to visit. Events are saved to a chronological feed, which you can revisit whenever you’re looking for something to do. Other activities without a date, as well as places you’d like to visit, are organized into separate tabs within the app. You can also save events to your Apple or Google Calendar or view them in Outernet’s map.

The app can also send proactive reminders and nudges that encourage you to go do the things you’ve saved.

Then, as you explore places in the real world, you can “stamp” them as such, building what will eventually become a passport documenting your activities.

“We’re thinking of different ways of creating maybe some sort of like passport book where you can look at all the things [you’ve done] and maybe share that with friends and get some sort of sense of pride of that,” Egan says of future product plans. They’re also thinking of using traditional gamification techniques to encourage activity, like giving out stamps when you reach different milestones.

The idea for Outernet came out of the co-founders’ experience designing a citywide scavenger hunt in San Francisco, called “Pursuit,” which began three years ago and is now held annually. The monthlong game drew participation from about 1.5% of San Francisco’s population during its most recent run.

As the founders chatted with participants, they found that people didn’t get involved because they loved scavenger hunts or adventure games; they just wanted an excuse to go outside. This sparked an idea.

“We just realized that people really have an appetite for doing things, like going on adventures. This is the new trend,” notes Leong, whose background is in computer science and child development, before she landed a job in adventure game design.

This post is brought to you in paid partnership with AliExpress

Content creation has never been more accessible, but building a capable camera kit is still a costly investment. Whether you’re chasing cinematic travel videos, growing a YouTube channel, or capturing everyday moments with professional polish, the right gear doesn’t come cheap. AliExpress’s August promotion puts some of DJI’s most popular creator gear within easier reach, thanks to discounts across the Osmo lineup. Shoppers can also save even more at checkout with exclusive Digital Trends coupon codes, offering up to an extra $70 off eligible orders depending on the purchase value. If an upgrade has been on your wishlist, this is a good time to make it happen.

This is the DJI deal every content creator should see

If one deal defines this promotion, it’s the DJI Osmo 360. Built for creators who want to capture immersive 360-degree content without carrying a bulky camera setup, DJI’s flagship 360 camera is available for $324.73 during the AliExpress August promotion. Apply the YDT35 coupon at checkout and the price drops to just $289.73.

The Osmo 360 is built around native 8K 360-degree recording, giving you the freedom to reframe your footage long after you’ve finished shooting. Whether you’re documenting a hiking trail, recording action sports, or creating cinematic travel videos, the ability to choose your perspective during editing opens up creative possibilities that traditional cameras simply can’t match. DJI’s stabilization technology also helps keep footage smooth, making it easier to produce polished content even when you’re on the move.

At under $290, the Osmo 360 delivers remarkable value for anyone looking to step into immersive content creation. Native 8K recording, reliable stabilization, and the flexibility to reframe every shot long after filming make it one of the standout buys in this month’s promotion.

Don’t overlook this deal on the DJI Osmo Pocket 3

The DJI Osmo Pocket 3 continues to be one of DJI’s best-value cameras for creators who want stabilized, high-quality video without spending a fortune. Priced at $320.52 during the AliExpress August promotion, the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 becomes an even better value with an additional $35 off using the YDT35 coupon, bringing the final price down to just $285.52.

What continues to make the Pocket 3 stand out is its combination of a large 1-inch sensor and DJI’s proven three-axis mechanical gimbal. Together, they produce smooth, cinematic footage that’s difficult to achieve with a smartphone alone. Add the rotating touchscreen, intelligent tracking features, and compact design, and you have a camera that’s just as comfortable filming travel adventures as it is capturing everyday moments or creating social-first content.

If you’ve been waiting to upgrade from your phone without investing in a full-sized camera, the Pocket 3 delivers an impressive mix of portability, stabilization, and image quality at a very attractive sale price.

Grab the DJI Osmo Pocket 4 without stretching your budget

If you’d rather invest in the camera first and add accessories later, the standard DJI Osmo Pocket 4 offers a more affordable way into DJI’s latest pocket-sized ecosystem. It’s available for $514.50 during the AliExpress August promotion, and applying the YDT70 coupon at checkout brings the final price down to just $445.

At the heart of the Pocket 4 is DJI’s signature three-axis mechanical gimbal, which keeps handheld footage remarkably smooth whether you’re walking through a busy city, documenting a vacation, or filming on the move. Combined with a large 1-inch sensor, support for up to 6K video, ActiveTrack 7.0, and generous built-in storage, it gives creators the confidence to shoot high-quality content without carrying a larger camera setup.

The Pocket 4 strikes an excellent balance between portability and performance. Compact enough to go everywhere yet capable enough to become your everyday camera for vlogs, travel diaries, family moments, and social-first content, it’s an easy upgrade for anyone ready to move beyond smartphone videos.

If you’re serious about creating, buy the bundle

If you’re serious about creating, there’s very little reason to settle for the standalone camera. Available for $511.94 during the AliExpress August promotion, the DJI Osmo Pocket 4 Creator Combo drops to just $442 with the YDT70 coupon, giving you the Pocket 4 plus essential accessories in one package.

The Creator Combo pairs the Pocket 4 with practical accessories including the DJI Mic 3, wide-angle lens, battery handle, and tripod, giving you everything you need to start creating right away. Whether you’re filming travel vlogs, recording interviews, producing YouTube videos, or capturing everyday moments, the bundle offers a more complete setup without the hassle of buying accessories separately.

Instead of gradually adding accessories over time, the Creator Combo gives you a ready-to-shoot package from day one. With premium audio, extended battery life, and greater shooting flexibility included in the box, it’s the ideal choice for creators who want to get the most out of the Pocket 4 from the very beginning.

Step up to the Pocket 4P with the Standard Combo

For creators who want the most complete Pocket 4P experience, the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P Standard Combo builds on the Standard Combo with an expanded collection of accessories for more ambitious projects. It’s available for $847.62 during the AliExpress August promotion, and applying the YDT70 coupon at checkout brings the final price down to just $778.

The Creator Combo includes everything you need to tackle more demanding projects from day one. Whether you’re filming documentaries, producing polished YouTube videos, creating client work, or capturing content while travelling, having the right accessories bundled together means you can spend less time shopping for add-ons and more time creating.

If you’re planning to invest in DJI’s ecosystem for the long term, the Creator Combo is the most complete package in the Pocket 4P lineup. With the camera and essential accessories included in one box, it’s a convenient, future-ready setup for creators who don’t want to compromise.

Make the most of the AliExpress August promotion

Building a content creation kit is rarely a one-time purchase. Cameras, microphones, accessories, and other essentials all add to the final cost, which is why promotions like this can make a meaningful difference. Across DJI’s Osmo lineup, the AliExpress August promotion brings down the prices of everything from entry-level creator cameras to premium production bundles, making it easier to find a setup that fits both your needs and your budget.

The savings don’t end with the listed prices, either. Throughout the promotion, exclusive Digital Trends coupon codes help bring the final checkout price down even further, making everything from standalone cameras to Creator Combos even more compelling purchases. If you’re planning to invest in a Creator Combo or pick up multiple products in a single order, those extra savings can add up quickly.

Whether you’re exploring immersive 360-degree filmmaking with the Osmo 360, taking your first step beyond smartphone photography with the Pocket 3, upgrading to the latest Pocket 4, or investing in a fully equipped Creator Combo, the AliExpress August promotion makes it easier to pick up DJI gear for less.

This content is paid for by the brands indicated. Digital Trends works closely with advertisers to highlight their products and services to our readers. Although this article is informational and not opinionated, it reflects thorough fact-checking by our team to ensure accuracy. Our dedicated partnerships team, not external advertisers, crafts all branded content in-house. For more information on our approach to branded content, click here.

Apple deals are selling out fast, with limited quantities available of Apple’s 15-inch M5 MacBook Air with 24GB of memory, now $200 off.

B&H’s August MacBook Air sale knocks $200 off a popular 15-inch MacBook Air spec featuring Apple’s current M5 chip and an upgrade to 24GB of unified memory.

Buy 15″ MacBook Air 24GB for $1,499

The reduced price of $1,499 is available now in Apple’s Midnight finish, with free 2-day shipping on orders shipped within the contiguous U.S.

According to B&H, which is an Apple Authorized Reseller and has been in business since 1973, limited supply is available at the special price and the offer may sell out.

13-inch MacBook Air deals

• 13″ M5 (8C GPU, 16GB, 512GB, 70W Power Adapter; Silver, Midnight, or Sky Blue): $1,199 ($120 off)
• 13″ M5 (10C GPU, 16GB, 512GB, 40W Power Adapter, Midnight): $1,249 ($150 off)
• 13″ M5 (10C GPU, 16GB, 1TB, 70W Power Adapter, Midnight): $1,499 ($100 off)
• 13″ M5 (10C GPU, 24GB, 512GB, 40W Power Adapter, Silver): $1,349 ($150 off)

15-inch MacBook Air discounts

• 15″ M5 (10C GPU, 16GB, 512GB, 70W Power Adapter, Midnight): $1,349 ($170 off)
• 15″ M5 (10C GPU, 16GB, 1TB, 35W Dual USB-C Power Adapter, Midnight): $1,649 ($170 off)
• 15″ M5 (10C GPU, 24GB, 512GB, 40W Power Adapter, Midnight): $1,499 ($200 off)
• 15″ M5 (10C GPU, 24GB, 512GB, 35W Dual USB-C Power Adapter, Midnight): $1,599 ($120 off)
• 15″ M5 (10C GPU, 24GB, 1TB, 70W Power Adapter, Midnight): $1,849 ($170 off)
• 15″ M5 (10C GPU, 24GB, 1TB, 35W Dual USB-C Power Adapter, Midnight): $1,869 ($150 off)

You can check out deals on even more models in our 15-inch MacBook Air Price Guide, with this offer ringing in as the steepest discount available.

This article is brought to you by COMSOL.

In pursuit of improved range, greater reliability, and faster charging, electric vehicles are driving the demand for high-voltage electronics. Other applications driving this demand include wind farms, data centers, and server farms, to name a few. As the interest for high-voltage electronics increases, the risks associated with their sudden failure must be considered.

Much of what causes high-voltage equipment to malfunction can be linked to the conditions of the climate in which it operates. Specifically, condensation on electronic surfaces caused by humidity can lead to corrosion, which can result in stray leak current and dendrite shorting during Electrochemical Migration (ECM).

Predicting, mitigating, and helping proactively design to account for corrosion is the focus of the Centre for Electronic Corrosion (CELCORR) research group at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). The group’s researchers are working with industry partners to develop models and simulation apps that will help in building robust electronics designs. Their goal is to develop knowledge that can be used for manufacturing electronics to withstand humid operating conditions.

Electronic Failure: “It’s Not the Heat; It is the Humidity”

Automotive electrification and renewable energy systems rely on electronics at all stages of the energy chain. When these electronics, such as the example PCB in Figure 1, are exposed to the effects of moisture, they can become potential failure points.

“Anywhere you are producing, converting, transporting, and using energy, you need these high-power electronic systems that get affected by the humidity,” explained Dr. Rajan Ambat, DTU professor and manager of CELCORR. Ambient moisture can seep into the devices and machines that require these electronics and cause unexpected functional issues through corrosion. When these electronics are involved in particularly high-voltage applications (such as wind farms, data centers, electric vehicles, and server farms), failure due to humidity exposure can even lead to fire.

“There might be a situation where somebody installs a solar panel near the seashore or in an area with high humidity, and within a short period of time, a conducive condition forms inside the electronics that results in a failure,” Ambat said. “This is why we need to understand exactly how the conducive condition of condensation is created, when the condition is created, and how the system is failing.”

Figure 1. The electrolyte potential and current density distributions on a PCB surface (with pinholes).CELCORR/DTU

Identifying corrosion as the underlying cause of some electronic failures is still a challenge. “Fifty percent of failures in electronics are currently branded with an unidentified root cause,” Ambat explained. “When engineers open up the system, they do not realize that the failure was due to corrosion, because moisture disappears without leaving any sign of corrosion unless there is ECM dendrite formation.”

This lack of awareness was a strong motivator for CELCORR, which turned to multiphysics simulation as a supplementary tool to help its partner organizations to better predict humidity-related issues at the design stage.

Modeling Moisture and Measuring Parameter Changes in PCBs

CELCORR believes the best way to identify and avoid electronic failures is to build more effective designs that better prevent corrosion from developing or can withstand a higher humidity load. Its research team applies its expertise in modeling to generate simulation apps that will help partner industries to evaluate safe designs for humidity robustness.

“We are at the intersection of materials science and the electronics industry. We work as a bridge between materials and electronics disciplines, using both kinds of language,” Dr. Anish Rao Lakkaraju, a postdoctoral researcher at CELCORR, explained.

To understand potential design issues, Ambat emphasized the importance of virtually breaking down systems to identify where problems may arise. “We need simulation software to analyze potential uses of designs and whether new designs are good or bad,” Ambat said.

Researchers at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) are using simulation apps to predict corrosion and design electronics proactively to mitigate or withstand its effects.

Using the COMSOL Multiphysics software for investigation, the CELCORR research team together with other research partners (Aalborg University) built an example model with a simple PCB geometry that matched both its test circuit boards as well as the design of a device used by one of its partner companies. The team then added a water film layer on top to act as the relative humidity. From there, the team could introduce variation. “We change the layout, geometry, distance between electrodes, thickness of the water film, and conductivity of the water film depending on the conditions,” Ambat said.

Ambat and his team generate data on the effect of these variations and can identify which has the greatest impact on the device’s performance and whether any alterations can improve the device’s anticorrosion robustness. “We assume there is condensation forming on the electronic surfaces (Figure 2) and compute the electrochemical leak current for different design elements,” Ambat said. “The value of the computed electrochemical current between the parts will give us an indication of whether the PCB will be affected or not.”

Figure 2. A 10-µm water film condensation effect on an example PCB.CELCORR/DTU

Altering the design elements and solving the model equations again and again allows the team to better understand what makes a design effective. “Now, we are at the current form of the model, and we are quite happy with where the physics are at this point,” Lakkaraju said. This modeling, however, was just the first part of CELCORR’s overarching goal of illuminating the destructive potential of corrosion in electronics and the best ways to avoid it.

Using Simulation Apps to Test Real-World Designs

To open up and ease access to these models, CELCORR used the Application Builder in COMSOL Multiphysics to create simulation applications for the members of the industrial consortium. Built with a simple 3D circuit board geometry with two oppositely biased electrodes and a water layer to replicate corrosion-causing moisture, the apps provide a pared-back, straightforward interface where users can vary model inputs. “We focused on fundamental aspects,” Lakkaraju said. “We boiled down our partners’ overarching concerns to create two apps with very simple geometries and the simplistic stuff that can be varied over multiple parameters.”

The simple simulation apps shown in Figures 3 and 4 are designed to show companies how the distance between the electrodes and the thickness of the moisture layer affect the leak current through the water film depending on different parameters. By analyzing multiple design elements and parameters, users can determine the relative benefits of certain design elements on the humidity robustness. “The apps we have built have really helped because they give the electronics engineers a plug-and-play sort of approach,” Lakkaraju explained.

Figure 3. The UI of CELCORR’s standalone app showing the inputs that users can alter.CELCORR/DTU

“By using this app [Figure 3], companies have unlimited freedom to work with these sorts of variables,” Lakkaraju added. “This would be quite difficult to recreate in real life with physical design and testing, and the companies we work with are quite happy with the level of accuracy the app can provide.”

Figure 4. The UI of one of the simulation apps showing a streamline plot with inputs such as the cathode voltage and blockage length.CELCORR/DTU

Looking Forward: Complex, High-Voltage Modeling

Alongside its collaboration with the industry consortium, CELCORR is also working toward improving the world’s general understanding of corrosion’s impact on electronics. To do this, Ambat and his team are undertaking multiple projects, including actively adding greater complexity to their models. In a tertiary current distribution model they are building, the team is drilling down into each of the basic inputs used in a secondary current distribution model, zooming in to examine the effects of the set of even more detailed inputs each basic input comprises.

“The next point is to study what each of these detailed inputs does,” Lakkaraju said. In particular, the team is examining mass transport properties and the chemical reactions’ rate constants.

In addition to these ongoing studies, CELCORR is expanding the scope of its research to investigate corrosion in high-power, high-voltage systems. Thanks to a 2024 grant from the Grundfos Foundation, CELCORR was able to establish the Centre for Climate Robust Electronics Design (CRED). The center’s lab facilities and expertise are being developed to address the humidity-robustness requirements of today’s high-voltage and high-power electronic equipment. “Using CELCORR’s uniquely deep understanding of materials and corrosion, we are equipped to find the root cause and provide knowledge for environmentally robust designs,” said Ambat.

For all of its investigation, CELCORR continues to rely on the agility of the COMSOL Multiphysics software. As Lakkaraju explained, “It is really quite nice how a model can be adapted to a variety of combinations of materials, geometries, and parameters and how the software allows you to keep building on from there.”