Ventec: Eye on the Future, with Automotive and Lighting Front and Center

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes

Mauve: This is a good question, again. I consider the “customers” to be the people doing the designing, because you see a lot of IP involved with thermally conductive materials, much more than comes with FR-4 standard product. It is like the situation with a low Dk/Df product, where the design is going to be based on particular product properties, rather than on a generic specification. And we are not only focusing on single-sided single-layer IMS base materials—we also have a comprehensive range of thermally-conductive laminates, thin cores and prepregs that can be incorporated into hybrid multilayers, with one, two or more thermally conductive layers that you can electrically connect and thermally connect to the top, where you have high temperature-emitting components. This is much easier to do than using copper-invar-copper; it is much simpler to adapt this process, and then you can really be successful compared with the old thermal dissipation techniques.

Starkey: Didier, do you see many new developments in the applications of your insulated metal substrates in situations where you have embedded components?

Mauve: Yes, we do. We have customers making more and more embedded-component structures, where you must take the heat out of the embedded components, and the components have to be surrounded by the prepregs and by the resin system that's pulling the heat out of the components. Of course, this is a totally different ballgame than the single-sided, single layer, IMS-based product, but it is thermal management as well. So, you must evacuate heat and avoid vibration, because more and more of these components are located near the wheels or in the power-train where vibrations are a concern.

Starkey: These applications are mainly focused on the automotive electronics sector?

Mauve: Most of the applications are coming from the automotive sector, at this time, and the rest is coming from aerospace, because in space you don't have air; you have to manage heat transfer as best you can. You cannot force air into a device because this is vacuum, and air is a poor thermal conductor anyway—you can use air for thermal insulation rather than conduction! The magnitude and the span of the application today is still quite vast, because automotive is the driving force right now. If you look at automotive in the coming 10 years, the cockpit is going to look more like an aircraft cockpit, and the spec isn't going to be that far away from an aircraft if you look at the temperature, although of course we are not talking about -70°C. But as far as the pricing, because by nature automotive is looking to drive product cost down to make it affordable to the masses. This is not going to be the same spec, but this is very challenging for us. At the same time, where you have some price and cost constraint by the aerospace and aircraft industry due to the low numbers that you have to issue, automotive on the other hand gives you the perfect leverage for that.

Starkey: Particularly when you're servicing the automotive industry; again, you've got two conflicting requirements. On one hand, you want the performance and the reliability, and on the other hand, you want the minimum cost. I'm sure there are occasions when you could offer them a perfect technical solution, but at a cost that could not be afforded. It's about intelligent applications engineering.

Mauve: The automotive gives you this safety of four years or five years visibility. This is a good thing. Of course, you understand the name of the game is you are going to be under extreme cost constraint, and you know that for sure. You don't take for granted that you're going to be indebted for the next 20 years, but it is still very challenging in. And then you have the volume at the same time. The learning curve is exponential, because you get the volume, you get the production, you learn how to do it, you do it better and better, and improve your process. It’s a win-win game in the end.

Goldman: I have a question for you, Thomas. What percentage of your business is thermal laminates now? What was it, and how do you see it increasing, perhaps as a percentage of the laminate business, if not yours, in general?

Michels: Five years ago, we started these thermal management discussions because we were contacted by some big automotive OEMs. At that time, we had a small amount of business in IMS for LED lighting and other stuff. After two years, it was 1% of the business. Two years ago, it was 3%. Last year, it was more than 6%. This year, it will hit double digits.

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