-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- design007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueLevel Up Your Design Skills
This month, our contributors discuss the PCB design classes available at IPC APEX EXPO 2024. As they explain, these courses cover everything from the basics of design through avoiding over-constraining high-speed boards, and so much more!
Opportunities and Challenges
In this issue, our expert contributors discuss the many opportunities and challenges in the PCB design community, and what can be done to grow the numbers of PCB designers—and design instructors.
Embedded Design Techniques
Our expert contributors provide the knowledge this month that designers need to be aware of to make intelligent, educated decisions about embedded design. Many design and manufacturing hurdles can trip up designers who are new to this technology.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - design007 Magazine
HDI PCBs: Make the Right Choice from Design to Volume
December 20, 2017 | Chris Nuttall, NCABEstimated reading time: 1 minute
Modern electronic products are expected to offer evermore advanced functions, while the products themselves are becoming increasingly smaller. This puts greater demand on the PCB design and the aspects relating to the PCB manufacturing process. There are two key factors for the successful production of HDI PCBs: first, making the right choices at the design stage, and then carefully choosing the factory that can support the specific technical demands of the project.
Whether it’s consumer electronics, computers, automotive or medical technology, the overall trend is reduction in size. Not just through a reduction in actual or finished product size, but also as the components themselves are becoming smaller, so the assemblies must be more densely packed and use smaller features.
Consider the way mobile phones have evolved. A modern smartphone is so much thinner, lighter and smaller than the mobiles we had 10 years ago, but in terms of what it can do, it is light years more advanced than its predecessors. Therefore, the PCBs inside are having to accommodate more and more functions making the design itself much more complex, and all of this on smaller and smaller circuit boards.
The onset of these increasingly sophisticated electronic products, has led to more advanced PCBs becoming more commonplace.
The specifications here require high-density interconnect (HDI) solutions with greater number of layers, and more connections both on the surface and inside the PCB, utilizing finer conductor widths and narrower spaces between them. This all leads to a design that is based upon smaller, laser-drilled microvias (blind vias), since normal through-hole vias simply wouldn’t fit into the space available. Therefore, we are seeing manufacturers producing more boards that also incorporate buried vias. All of which increases the number of interconnections within the board and frees up valuable space on the outer layer for more components to be placed.
The increased number of layers, together with the microvia technology, also requires the use of thinner prepegs and cores than in conventionally manufactured boards which also leads to increased demands upon the factories.
To read this entire article, which appeared in the November 2017 issue of The PCB Design Magazine, click here.
Suggested Items
KIC’s Miles Moreau to Present Profiling Basics and Best Practices at SMTA Wisconsin Chapter PCBA Profile Workshop
01/25/2024 | KICKIC, a renowned pioneer in thermal process and temperature measurement solutions for electronics manufacturing, announces that Miles Moreau, General Manager, will be a featured speaker at the SMTA Wisconsin Chapter In-Person PCBA Profile Workshop.
The Drive Toward UHDI and Substrates
09/20/2023 | I-Connect007 Editorial TeamPanasonic’s Darren Hitchcock spoke with the I-Connect007 Editorial Team on the complexities of moving toward ultra HDI manufacturing. As we learn in this conversation, the number of shifting constraints relative to traditional PCB fabrication is quite large and can sometimes conflict with each other.
Standard Of Excellence: The Products of the Future
09/19/2023 | Anaya Vardya -- Column: Standard of ExcellenceIn my last column, I discussed cutting-edge innovations in printed circuit board technology, focusing on innovative trends in ultra HDI, embedded passives and components, green PCBs, and advanced substrate materials. This month, I’m following up with the products these new PCB technologies are destined for. Why do we need all these new technologies?
Experience ViTrox's State-of-the-Art Offerings at SMTA Guadalajara 2023 Presented by Sales Channel Partner—SMTo Engineering
09/18/2023 | ViTroxViTrox, which aims to be the world’s most trusted technology company, is excited to announce that our trusted Sales Channel Partner (SCP) in Mexico, SMTo Engineering, S.A. de C.V., will be participating in SMTA Guadalajara Expo & Tech Forum. They will be exhibiting in Booth #911 from the 25th to the 26th of October 2023, at the Expo Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico.
Intel Unveils Industry-Leading Glass Substrates to Meet Demand for More Powerful Compute
09/18/2023 | IntelIntel announced one of the industry’s first glass substrates for next-generation advanced packaging, planned for the latter part of this decade.