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Looking Outside the Hole: The Evolution of Via Drilling
July 25, 2013 |Estimated reading time: 1 minute
Introduction
In the world of electronics, less is often more when it comes to device fabrication and product developers are continually looking for ways to shrink their products. There is pressure in many industries to pack more components, such as microcontrollers, wireless communication, and power delivery into an ever-decreasing footprint. However, conventional PCB technology is often limited to features greater than 50 microns, which severely impedes the ability to increase component density on a given device. New developments in laser-based fabrication that are an extension of laser microvia drilling technology are helping to reduce these dimensions and facilitating the miniaturization of electronic devices.
The Importance of Hole and Trace Sizes
Most readers will readily agree that interconnect circuit vias and traces are critical to the miniaturization of electronic devices. As vias and traces get smaller, component packing density can be increased, interconnect circuits can be made with fewer layers, and more features can be more easily integrated into small devices. The primary function of vias is the electrical interconnection of conductive traces between different layers of the device substrate. Precisely drilled holes allow designers to build more complex devices with a much smaller footprint. In addition to small holes and traces, another limiting factor has always been the ability to fill via holes with conductive material. New miniaturization processes are capable of addressing these issues and enable the manufacturing of next-generation electronic products, such as implantable medical devices, wireless communication and microfluidic devices.
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the May 2013 issue of The PCB Magazine.