-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- design007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueSilicon to Systems: From Soup to Nuts
This month, we asked our expert contributors to weigh in on silicon to systems—what it means to PCB designers and design engineers, EDA companies, and the rest of the PCB supply chain... from soup to nuts.
Cost Drivers
In this month’s issue of Design007 Magazine, our expert contributors explain the impact of cost drivers on PCB designs and the need to consider a design budget. They discuss the myriad design cycle cost adders—hidden and not so hidden—and ways to add value.
Mechatronics
Our expert contributors discuss the advent of mechatronics in PCB design, the challenges and opportunities this creates for circuit board designers, and the benefits—to the employee and the company—of becoming a mechatronics engineer.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - design007 Magazine
Estimated reading time: 1 minute
Beyond Design: It’s a Material World
Years ago, when clock frequencies were low and signal rise times were slow, selecting a dielectric material for your PCB was not difficult; we all just used FR-4. And we didn’t really care about the properties of the materials.
However, with today’s multi-gigabit designs and their extremely fast rise times and tight margins, precise material selection is crucial to the performance of the product. Materials used for the fabrication of the multilayer PCB absorb high frequencies and reduce edge rates, and that loss in the transmission lines is a major cause of signal integrity issues. But we are not all designing cutting-edge boards and sometimes we tend to over-specify requirements that can lead to inflated production costs.
Over the years, a huge range of materials have been developed for multilayer PCB fabrication. In fact, to give you an idea, iCD now has a choice of over 700 series of dielectric materials from more than 60 different manufacturers, in its dielectric materials library. When each material is used for the right target application, the resultant PCB will have the lowest possible cost while still satisfying the design and performance goals of the project. There’s no doubt that we live in a material world and selecting the best material for an application is often a daunting task. In this month’s column, I will look at how to quickly sort through the vast array of choices to make an informed decision.
To read this entire column, which appeared in the August 2018 issue of Design007 Magazine, click here.
More Columns from Beyond Design
Beyond Design: Integrated Circuit to PCB IntegrationBeyond Design: Does Current Deliver the Energy in a Circuit?
Beyond Design: Termination Planning
Beyond Design: Dielectric Material Selection Guide
Beyond Design: The Art of Presenting PCB Design Courses
Beyond Design: Embedded Capacitance Material
Beyond Design: Return Path Optimization
Beyond Design: Just a Matter of Time