Die thickness of common, high-volume chip stacks range from 50 to 100 um while thinning industry aims for ultra-thin chips of 10 um thickness, or less. For the first time, the required interconnect length between vertically arranged adjacent chip layers has reached dimensions that can be reasonably realized by anisotropic conductive adhesives layers (ACA).

The PCB industry in Asia is pulsing with activity. Shenzhen Fastprint is targeting production capability of up to 40-layer rigid multi-layer PCBs; KCE Electronics is aiming to grow its 2H revenue; and Wus Printed Circuit is now public.

What is "rheology" and why does "everything flow?" Chet Guiles examines the science of rheology and how understanding the rheology of the prepregs you use, during the time they melt and flow, can help a process engineer manage and control the lamination process.

Casey Cooper, Microelectronics Lab Manager at STI, talks about the company's various educational, training and technology offerings and provides an overview of the company's newly-developed and tested embedded die assembly. The new assembly is being evaluated by some military product developers for high-reliability applications.

Interconnect separation is usually expressed as a crack that propagates at the internal interconnection. This failure mode produces a crack that is wedge-shaped, with the large end on the side of the foil closest to the middle of the PWB. An interconnect failure frequently develops slowly over time, accumulating damage at a constant rate after onset.

PCBs sales in Germany slid in May, according to data from ZVEI PCB and Electronic Systems, but were still a 40% improvement from May of last year. Cumulatively, sales for the first five months of this year were up 32% and incoming orders also reached record highs in May, jumping 137% year-on-year.

For several years technologies have been developed for the embedding of chips in circuit boards to achieve 3-D packages using conventional processes from PCB manufacturing. Ultra-thin chips are suited to be integrated in rigid circuit boards, as well as on, and in, multilayer flexible substrates.

The sales increase was primarily due to increased sales of flex heater and coil insulation products for the general industrial market as a result of the economic rebound and increased sales of PCB materials related to the telecommunications infrastructure in China.

Most manufacturers in Asia are embarking on technology and manufacturing upgrades: Lin Horn is increasing its manufacturing of six- and eight-layer PCBs; WMT is targeting 24-layer boards; Unimicron is focusing on 300-micron ball pitch; and Taiflex plans to increase its FCCL capacity.

In this paper, authors from Endicott Interconnect show various organic optical waveguide samples using various fabrication methods. A detailed discussion of all the processes, materials and equipment sets that are employed in the fabrication of the organic optical waveguides are presented.