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Douglas G. Brooks Co-Authors “Trace and Via Currents and Temperatures”
May 25, 2016 | Douglas G. BrooksEstimated reading time: 1 minute

Douglas G. Brooks, PhD and Dr. Johannes Adam, CID have teamed up to write PCB Trace and Via Currents and Temperatures: The Complete Analysis. Brooks has been looking at trace current and temperature relationships since the mid-1990s. Now, he and Adam, of the consulting group Adam Research, have assembled decades of knowledge into these pages.
Starting with a historical background, this book covers: (a) PCB materials (copper and dielectrics) and the role they play in the heating and cooling of traces; (b) The IPC curves found in IPC 2152; (c) Equations that fit those curves; (d) Computer simulations that fit those curves and equations; (e) Sensitivity analyses showing what happens when we vary the environment (adjacent traces and planes, changing trace lengths, thermal gradients, etc.); (f) Via temperatures and what determines them; (g) Via current densities; (h) Fusing issues, what happens when traces are overloaded, and (i) Thermal gradients along traces, even at low temperatures.
Also provided are supplemental chapters or appendices about measuring the thermal conductivity of dielectrics and measuring the resistivity of copper traces (and why many prior attempts to do so have been doomed to failure.) And there is even a chapter on whether industrial CT scanning might replace microsections for measuring trace parameters. Never before has such a thorough compendium been available, especially so conveniently.
This book is available through Amazon.
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RF PCB Design Tips and Tricks
05/08/2025 | Cherie Litson, EPTAC MIT CID/CID+There are many great books, videos, and information online about designing PCBs for RF circuits. A few of my favorite RF sources are Hans Rosenberg, Stephen Chavez, and Rick Hartley, but there are many more. These PCB design engineers have a very good perspective on what it takes to take an RF design from schematic concept to PCB layout.
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.
Elephantech: For a Greener Tomorrow
04/16/2025 | Marcy LaRont, PCB007 MagazineNobuhiko Okamoto is the global sales and marketing manager for Elephantech Inc., a Japanese startup with a vision to make electronics more sustainable. The company is developing a metal inkjet technology that can print directly on the substrate and then give it a copper thickness by plating. In this interview, he discusses this novel technology's environmental advantages, as well as its potential benefits for the PCB manufacturing and semiconductor packaging segments.
Trouble in Your Tank: Organic Addition Agents in Electrolytic Copper Plating
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