Defense Speak Interpreted: If CHIPS Cuts Back, What Happens to Electronics Packaging Funds?
American Made Advocacy: Where’s the Budget for a Modern Military Run on Microelectronics?
Beyond the Board: Orbital High Ground—Why Space Superiority Is Slipping Away
Beyond Prepreg: The Glassless ‘Revolution’
June 25, 2024 | Marcy LaRont, PCB007 MagazineEstimated reading time: 2 minutes
As our industry rallies around the call to action for HDI and UHDI, we find unparalleled and myriad laminate options. This abundance is rivaled only by the question surrounding them: Can they measure up to the high technology packaging demands required in our near future? Unsurprisingly, recent developments in FR-4-esque materials for high-speed and high-density designs, as well as newer, glassless technology for replacing traditional glass-impregnated laminates and prepreg, are garnering much interest. I caught up with Alun Morgan, technology ambassador for Ventec International Group, to ask about the impending “glassless revolution” and how it’s poised to solve some of our manufacturing challenges.
Marcy LaRont: Alun, can you explain glassless epoxy filler? Is it liquid?
Alun Morgan: It's not liquid; it’s a rubber-like unreinforced dielectric material. The industry vernacular for this is bondply. It is a non-glass reinforced resin that can be delivered in two standard formats: resin-coated copper foil (RCC) or resin-coated film (RCF).
There are many ways of delivering resin into a circuit board. The standard way is to use prepreg, which is a resin-impregnated fiber, and usually a glass fabric. Another option is to screen-print the resin onto the printed circuit board material, which has been available for years. Then there is the bondply technique, which has a few specific advantages.
LaRont: We heard about this at a recent UHDI conference. Please explain bondply.
Morgan: It's a dielectric layer used in multilayer stackups where you want to build bonding in sequential layers. Imagine you have a circuit, and you want to make HDI layers on the outside with very thin dielectrics, 25–50 microns, just one or two mils. You take the board, which has copper on one side and laminate a layer of bondply onto it. In this case, that could be resin-coated copper foil. You form a pattern on the copper and laser drill through that layer to connect down to the layer beneath. You can build up layers that way, adding one layer after another. This is a standard technique for making multilayer, high density circuits, typically with microvias on the outside using such standard constructions as 2+4+2 or 2+8+2, etc. That is one area where these bondply films can be used and it is a standard method of forming thin layers.
Continue reading the rest of this interview which was originally published in the June 2024 issue of PCB007 Magazine.
Share on:
Testimonial
"In a year when every marketing dollar mattered, I chose to keep I-Connect007 in our 2025 plan. Their commitment to high-quality, insightful content aligns with Koh Young’s values and helps readers navigate a changing industry. "
Brent Fischthal - Koh YoungSuggested Items
Fresh PCB Concepts: Designing for Success at the Rigid-flex Transition Area
08/28/2025 | Team NCAB -- Column: Fresh PCB ConceptsRigid-flex PCBs come in all shapes and sizes. Manufacturers typically use fire-retardant, grade 4 (FR-4) materials in the rigid section and flexible polyimide materials in the flex region. Because of the small size, some rigid-flex PCBs, like those for hearing aid devices, are among the most challenging to manufacture. However, regardless of its size, we should not neglect the transition area between the rigid and flexible material.
Trouble in Your Tank: Causes of Plating Voids, Pre-electroless Copper
05/09/2025 | Michael Carano -- Column: Trouble in Your TankIn the business of printed circuit fabrication, yield-reducing and costly defects can easily catch even the most seasoned engineers and production personnel off guard. In this month’s column, I’ll investigate copper plating voids with their genesis in the pre-plating process steps.
Happy’s Tech Talk #37: New Ultra HDI Materials
02/03/2025 | Happy Holden -- Column: Happy’s Tech TalkSome new materials have been introduced in the past year for ultra high density interconnect (UHDI), a convenient title for developing high density technologies. They have received labels like semiconductor-like PCBs (SLPs), redistribution layers (RDL), flip-chip ball grid array (FCBGA), and interposers. The early 2000s saw the creation of these organic substrates for flip-chip IC packaging. The initial construction was composed of a BT core with build-up layers of the Ajinomoto Build-up Film (ABF)
BOOK EXCERPT: The Printed Circuit Assembler's Guide to... Encapsulating Sustainability for Electronics, Chapter 4
12/31/2024 | I-Connect007Bio-based encapsulation resins have the potential to contribute to sustainability targets by extending product lifetime and improving performance. The author explores the use of recycled materials such as biogenic waste and lightweight expandable polymers to create more efficient and environmentally friendly encapsulation resins.
Book Excerpt: The Printed Circuit Designer’s Guide to... DFM Essentials, Ch. 1
10/25/2024 | I-Connect007The guidelines offered in this book are based on both ASC recommendations and IPC standards with the understanding that some may require adjustment based on the material set, fabricator processes, and other design constraints. This chapter details high-frequency materials, copper foil types, metal core PCBs, and the benefits of embedded capacitance and resistor materials in multilayer PCBs.