I often work with circuit boards at my job. I don’t do anything special, I mainly just clean them and screw them into their housings. But when we clean them, we completely soak them into alcohol over and over again until they are spotless. How does this not damage the circuit board or the components on the board? Yet if I drop my phone in water, it will ruin it.
In: Chemistry
This isn’t necessarily the case.
Distilled water isn’t likely to damage electronics because pure water by itself has poor conductivity. However the electronics should be dried thoroughly and in short order, to prevent water trapped in small gaps and cavities from causing corrosion.
Tap water generally has enough dissolved salts, known as Electrolytes, that it has significant conductivity. This can cause short circuits that destroy sensitive microchips.
Solvent grade alcohol is usually also produced by distillation, so it doesn’t tend to have any dissolved electrolytes either and is therefore not conductive. Moreover it evaporates much more quickly than water, and is less likely to cause corrosion.
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