-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- pcb007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueThe Growing Industry
In this issue of PCB007 Magazine, we talk with leading economic experts, advocacy specialists in Washington, D.C., and PCB company leadership to get a well-rounded picture of what’s happening in the industry today. Don’t miss it.
The Sustainability Issue
Sustainability is one of the most widely used terms in business today, especially for electronics and manufacturing but what does it mean to you? We explore the environmental, business, and economic impacts.
The Fabricator’s Guide to IPC APEX EXPO
This issue previews many of the important events taking place at this year's show and highlights some changes and opportunities. So, buckle up. We are counting down to IPC APEX EXPO 2024.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - pcb007 Magazine
Celanese: Fired Up Over Ceramics
August 2, 2023 | Nolan Johnson, I-Connect007Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
With the ever-increasing diversity of performance needs in printed circuits, substrates are an ongoing area of development and innovation. At IMS Microwave Week, we caught up with Daniel Barish, a global strategy and west commercial leader at Celanese, to discuss substrates, low temperature co-fired ceramics, in particular.
Nolan Johnson: Daniel, it’s great to talk to you. Would you please introduce the company and the products you manufacture?
Daniel Barish: Celanese is a large chemical manufacturing company based out of Dallas, Texas. Our specific business—Micromax—is a portfolio of conductive inks and paste dielectrics, and substrates like our low temperature co-fired ceramics. Our legacy business was with DuPont, and we were acquired in November 2022.
Johnson: So, these products have a DuPont history?
Barish: That's correct. We were a DuPont business for about 60 years.
Johnson: Walk me through what you're sharing with customers here at the IMS show.
Barish: We’re promoting our low-temperature co-fired ceramics. These products feature silver conductors, dielectric substrates, all ceramics—they’re good for high reliability, and have years of experience in military applications from radar, avionics, and telecommunications. As we move to higher frequencies, and higher performance requirements, these materials are much better suited.
Here in San Diego, we’re launching a new ceramic substrate. It's thinner and geared for those high frequency applications in 5G. You can stack up from six to 80 layers of this material, print all the circuitry at one time, and then fire them all together as opposed to traditional processes with multiple steps. We think there are some process and performance advantages of this material.
Johnson: What are some of the adjustments you make to the product in order to work in such challenging conditions?
Barish: Processing this material is pretty straightforward. With equipment, which a lot of the manufacturers already have on hand, you adjust temperatures and the process parameters, then use these materials in a very similar way to make the components and substrates for 5G or for high frequency telecommunications.
Johnson: From your perspective talking to your customers, what are their primary drivers? What are they most interested in right now?
Barish: Performance and innovation. We're just getting started in the realm of 5G mmWave, what that really means, and what that capabilities are. We hear so much about AI, and that will need a whole lot of computing power. We're moving a lot more data, a lot more energy through the circuits, and everybody wants to get smaller and more compact. The challenge is in getting that same performance in a smaller package which actually enables these newer technologies. I think those are the drivers right now.
From a supply chain standpoint, there has been uncertainty, but it’s smoothing out. Cost is always there, but as we move to cutting-edge technology, cost becomes less of a driver.
Johnson: What's the right place in the design cycle to specify the use of your materials?
Barish: We think there's a large application around the LEO user terminals and mmWave cells, especially band pass filters, repeaters, antenna in packages, power modules, anything that needs to control the bandwidth, low loss, with good thermal stability in high frequency, and so forth.
Johnson: What’s been the customer response?
Barish: It's been great. We've built off our base customers who’ve already used these materials. As we bring on newer materials that are lead free, and material shifting from gold conductors to silver conductors, there's more acceptance from a cost standpoint, and a reasonable level of expectation of high performance.
Johnson: Fantastic. Is there anything else we should touch on?
Barish: Yes, in addition to low temperature co-fired ceramic materials, we also have a full line of other conductive paste inks from our traditional standpoint, and again, in telecommunications, from hybrid ceramics, where we have gold, platinum, ruthenium, palladium, silver base conductors and resistors that go along with our dielectrics to make all sorts of hybrid circuits, as well as solid down to low temperature polymer, polymer film products. So, our full suite of materials, all our manufacturing, and our team came over to selling needs from DuPont. We can rely on those 60 years of experience that we have as an industry leader, and the same great technical service, customer service, consistent quality that we've been known for over the years.
Johnson: Daniel, thanks so much for the update.
Barish: My pleasure.
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.