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I-Connect007’s Patty Goldman, Barry Matties, Andy Shaughnessy, and Happy Holden were recently joined by MacDermid Enthone team members Jordan Kologe, technical marketing specialist; Ted Antonellis, applications manager for electronics specialties; and Don Cullen, marketing director for electronics solutions and MacDermid performance solutions. The discussion topic was the wet processing end of PCB manufacturing.
Patty Goldman: We’re here to talk about wet processing for PCB manufacturing. What do we need our readers to know about wet processes?
Don Cullen: We just got back from some customer roadmap sessions in China, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong. A couple of the themes that are going through my head include the transition of automotive circuitry to finally adopting HDI and microvia designs. It is kind of surprising they hadn’t really done it yet, but that seems to be happening this year. Also, there’s a big theme around circuit boards becoming more like IC substrates and IC substrates trying to emulate the cost and productivity advantages of circuit boards.
We’re all trying to marry up the technology and fine line/fine pitch metrics between wafers, IC substrates, and bare PCBs. It all affects the trends in SAP and modified SAP technology.
Barry Matties: From the applications engineer point of view, what challenges are they looking to solve that’s currently in place?
Ted Antonellis: We support a lot of different processes. I spend most of my time in bonding chemistry , the alternative oxides. People want smoother and smoother coppers for signal integrity, so there are newer processes that depend more on chemical bonding than the actual mechanical bonding to improve on that.
To read the full version of this article which originally appeared in the June 2018 issue of PCB007 Magazine, click here.
