-
- 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
Material Witness: How About that Technical Roadmap!
May 15, 2015 | Chet GuilesEstimated reading time: 4 minutes
You may remember the movie What About Bob? If you do, you may recall the scene in which Bob (played by Bill Murray) confronts his psychiatrist (played by Richard Dreyfuss) and emotes, “I need! I need! I need! Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”
As I thought recently about some of the drivers that IPC and others have incorporated into their technical roadmaps (not that they all are new by any means, but each time they come out, some of the technical parameters are squeezed a bit harder) I feel a bit like that befuddled psychiatrist. It’s tough figuring out how to make materials that meet all the “I need!” and “Gimme!” requirements and drivers while still satisfying the UMS (Universal Material Specification): “Low dielectric constant, low loss, high performance and free.”
Consider just a few of the obvious considerations:
- Thermal dissipation increasingly drives design.
- Maximum board operating temperatures are rising (watt density).
- IC’s are going 3D resulting in much higher density devices.
- Fine line/space circuitry will continue to be critical as HDI demands increase.
- Mechanical drilling is being challenged for both through holes and buried/blind vias.
- Micro via technology and laser drilling will continue to push for smaller diameters.
- Higher frequencies are increasingly necessary as transmitted data volume increases.
- Enhanced glass styles (flat glass) will help signal stability at microwave frequencies.
- Land diameters will shrink as device I/O density increases.
- Registration on larger panels (fine lines and small lands) will increasingly be an issue.
- “Green” requirements will continue to be pushed – albeit at the “right price.”
- The percentage of assembled PWBs required to be recyclable will increase.
- Dielectric properties will be increasingly important as frequencies rise.
- Digital and RF/microwave materials will converge with conventional materials.
- Data demand will push the limits of current 3G and 4G build-outs (resulting in more HDI demand and at higher frequencies).
There are a variety of design, material and manufacturability issues that these tightening requirements should suggest to PWB raw material suppliers. Just a few:
- Thermally conductive materials will continue to become a greater part of the PWB package. Heat sinks alone will no longer do the whole job as density of device mounting becomes greater and greater, and consumers want an infinite amount of functionality in smaller and smaller packages. (My maturing—i.e., old—eyes already revolt at the idea of watching streaming movies on a 4 cm x 6 cm screen however HD the resolution may be.) Keeping device temperatures down becomes critical, as every 10oC of lowered temperature doubles the mean time between failures (MTBF). Thermally conductive microwave and RF materials will also find increasing usage as less thermal variability at the device level means more signal stability.
- The implications in building multilayer microchip IC’s are also huge, in that the density of features on a PWB will increase substantially (all that functionality eventually needs to reach the real world of people with large (relative to the IC anyway) hands and the need for stuff they can handle. My 17-year-old granddaughter texts at about a gazillion wpm, but my old, larger fingers have trouble touching only one of those little bitty keys at a time. And we want things smaller still? (Maybe voice- or thought-activated electronics will eventually allow some of these barriers to be eliminated.) One of the obvious implications of increasing HDI on PWBs is that registration, always an issue with lots of holes in large panel sizes will become a bigger gorilla. This will become even more critical as land sizes and hole diameters shrink, and more and thinner layers are needed to get the necessary signal density.
- Environmental issues, whatever any of us may think about the validity of the science behind some of the evolving requirements, will continue to require material suppliers to produce products that are “greener” (that is, having low levels of halogens and other banned chemicals) and more environmentally sustainable (including recycling, recovery of metals, recovery of energy from hydrocarbon based components, etc.). That includes finding sustainable substitutes for traditional brominated flame retardants and developing low cost materials that will survive in lead-free soldering environments. What solder systems may eventually become “standard” is not yet clear, but I have a sort of back of my mind worry that my new $2,500 Mitsubishi 3D HDTV will suddenly go “poof” and shut down because of tin whisker growth from the “environmentally safe” solder being used. The military OEMs are leery of newer solders for several reasons. All of us in the materials business need to wonder if the improved solutions to green and environmental issues have longer term issues (technical and political) we haven’t even considered yet. Are phosphorus-based flame retardants actually safer than halogens?
- The basic multilayer PWB is not going to go away soon. It remains needed to connect all this incredible functionality to the real world in packages that are suitable for human interconnection. When we get microchip ICs implanted in our brains that can project info into our ears and eyeballs directly (a super Google Glass?) and interconnect via microwaves with equally small chips in desktop computers that can be a few cubic inches in size, then maybe the PWB will start to fade away. But for now we need to interact with a technologically very adaptive world by tuning materials to the current needs set.
The “needs” and “gimmes” will never go away, and hopefully there will be common sense applied at the government regulatory level in the U.S. and elsewhere, though common sense and government sometimes to be antithetical. But as a materials guy, I see the challenges of the early 21st century demanding that we continue to evolve better and more cost effective materials, and to fine tune the ones we have. Our success at being flexible and adaptable will be a major definer of our success in the next few interesting years.
Chet Guiles is a consultant for Arlon Electronic Materials Division.
Suggested Items
AIM to Highlight NC259FPA Ultrafine No Clean Solder Paste at SMTA Wisconsin Expo & Tech Forum
04/18/2024 | AIMAIM Solder, a leading global manufacturer of solder assembly materials for the electronics industry, is pleased to announce its participation in the upcoming SMTA Wisconsin Expo & Tech Forum taking place on May 7 at the Four Points by Sheraton | Milwaukee Airport, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Hentec/RPS Publishes an Essential Guide to Selective Soldering Processing Tech Paper
04/17/2024 | Hentec Industries/RPS AutomationHentec Industries/RPS Automation, a leading manufacturer of selective soldering, lead tinning and solderability test equipment, announces that it has published a technical paper describing the critical process parameters that need to be optimized to ensure optimal results and guarantee the utmost in end-product quality.
Empowering Electronics Assembly: Introducing ALPHA Innolot MXE Alloy
04/16/2024 | MacDermid Alpha Electronics SolutionsIn the rapidly evolving electronics industry, where innovation drives progress, MacDermid Alpha Electronics Solutions is committed to setting a new standard. Today, we are pleased to introduce ALPHA Innolot MXE, a revolutionary alloy meticulously engineered to address the critical needs of enhanced reliability and performance in modern electronic assemblies.
New Book on Low-temperature Soldering Now Available
04/17/2024 | I-Connect007I-Connect007 is pleased to announce that The Printed Circuit Assembler’s Guide to… Low-temperature Soldering, Vol. 2, by subject matter experts at MacDermid Alpha Electronics Solutions, is now available for download.
Inkjet Solder Mask ‘Has Arrived’
04/10/2024 | Pete Starkey, I-Connect007I was delighted to be invited to attend an interactive webinar entitled “Solder Mask Coating Made Easy with Additive Manufacturing,” hosted by SUSS MicroTec Netherlands in Eindhoven. The webinar was introduced and moderated by André Bodegom, managing director at Adeon Technologies, and the speakers were Mariana Van Dam, senior product manager PCB imaging solutions at AGFA in Belgium; Ashley Steers, sales manager at Electra Polymers in the UK; and Dr. Luca Gautero, product manager at SUSS MicroTec Netherlands.