COMPARISON OF PCB MATERIALS FOR HIGH SPEED AND HDI BOARDS

COMPARISON OF PCB MATERIALS FOR HIGH SPEED AND HDI BOARDS



Any PCB uses a variety of materials to create a layer stackup, etch copper, apply solder mask, and print silkscreen. Each dielectric material you use to create your multilayer PCB stackup has different material properties, such as dielectric constant and thermal conductivity. When you’re designing for specialized applications, a thorough comparison of PCB materials can help you select the right base material for use in your next circuit board. Altium Designer gives you the features you need to select a base material for your multilayer PCB and prepare your new design for full-scale manufacturing.To get more news about BT PCB, you can visit pcbmake official website.

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Any PCB stackup you create for your circuit board will include multiple materials. Many different materials will be used during the PCB manufacturing. The materials you choose will determine power/signal loss, interconnect impedance, temperature rise, copper surface roughness, and temperature rise in your PCB. Not every base material is ideal for every application, so you’ll need to pick just the right base material for your PCB stackup to balance performance in these different areas.

With a thorough comparison of PCB materials, you can determine the best base material to use for your next system. Once you determine the best material to use for your circuit boards, the PCB stackup design and analysis tools in Altium Designer help you create a PCB layout for high speed circuit boards or HDI designs. Here is a comparison of PCB materials to help you choose the right base material for your circuit boards.
Fabricators continue to discover materials better suited to high speed circuit boards, HDI circuit boards, and high temperature environments. The various material properties above affect how high speed signals propagate in a substrate due to dispersion, as well as how the disperse heat and withstand mechanical shock. Some of these materials are suitable for microwave and mmWave devices, or for use in high temperature environments, but they are more expensive to produce. Your best bet in choosing a material is to start with FR4 and evaluate whether this material will be suitable for your application.

The industry primarily uses grade FR4 nonconductive material between layers of copper to build printed circuit boards. FR4 is a NEMA grade designation for glass-reinforced epoxy laminate material. The designation represents the ratio of fiber to resin and indicates characteristics such as flame retardant, dielectric constant, loss factor, tensile strength, shear strength, glass transition temperature, and z-axis expansion coefficient. FR4 is flame retardant making it suitable for safety requirements, and it is robust in varying temperature and humidity environments, increasing the quality of performance.

The major material components of PCBs are the polymer resin (dielectric material) with or without fillers, reinforcement, and metal foil. To form a PCB, alternate layers of dielectric, with or without reinforcement, are stacked in between the copper foil layers. The majority of the materials are epoxy, but some are BT, PPE, cyanate ester, and modified acrylates. The structure of a typical epoxy PCB laminate is shown above.