Technological Trends in Circuit Board Design & Manufacturing <40

Technological Trends in the Field of
Circuit Board
Design &
Manufacturing
Published by:

|www.toradex.com Toradex® is a registered trademark of Montadex GmbH Aug’15 2
CHAIRMAN
Introduction
Circuit boards are found in all electronic products. The advancement in
semiconductor technology is driving the giant electronics industry. PCB industry
has been quickly responding to the rapidly evolving global electronics market.
Today, circuit board designers should have a thorough knowledge of both
electrical engineering and manufacturing technology. Collaborating with EMS
vendors during early stages will helps the designers to reduce design risks and
find cost effective solutions.
This article will provide a brief overview of the technological trends prevailing
in the field of printed circuit technology and serve as a walkthrough to the
lesser known technologies in the printed circuit market.

CHAIRMAN
Market trends:
43%
0%1%
11%
16%
14%
6%
4%
5%
0% 0%
Global PCB Market: Based on Geography
China
Hong Kong
India
Japan
South Korea
Taiwan
Other Asia
West Europe
North America
Central and South America
Israel and North Africa

CHAIRMAN
11%
37%
15%
15%
18%
3%
1%
Global PCB Market: Based on Technology
Rigid 1-2 Sided
Standards Multilayer
HDI / Microvia / Buildup
IC Substrate
Flexible Circuits
Rigid Flex
Others

CHAIRMAN
Asian countries continue to fulfil the majority of the global PCB demand.
China, South Korea, and Taiwan continue to fulfill the huge demand created
by markets for smartphone, tablet computers, display monitors, and TV.
Export to western countries also accounts for a major chunk of the global PCB
demand because of highly competitive pricing offered by the Asian PCB
manufacturing industry.
The European PCB industry focuses on low volume and high-end markets like
instrumentation and control, automotive, medical, military, and aerospace.
Production in North America is dominated by the USA, largely occupied by
military, aerospace and defense sectors.
From technological point of view, a standard multilayer PCB still commands a
large share of the market. With global trend of miniaturization of electronic
products, HDI and Rigid-Flex technology will continue to grow in future.

CHAIRMAN
Industry Challenges
With advancement in ICs package technology, mobile revolution, and IOT
kicking in, PCB geometries will continue to shrink. Designing ultra-thin printed
circuit boards which meets the required signal integrity and EMC specifications
at low cost will be challenging.
Technology Trends
Printed circuit boards can be broadly classified into:
1) Conventional PCB (Single-sided, Double-sided and Multilayer PCB)
2) Flexible and Rigid-Flex PCB
3) High Density Interconnect (HDI)

CHAIRMAN
Example HDI board using “2-N-2” HDI Buildup (N = number of standard layers)

CHAIRMAN
HDI technology has been used in manufacturing products like wearables,
smartphones, and tablet devices.
One of the major challenges faced by the PCB industry is increasing the layer
count and reducing the thickness of the circuit boards without compromising the
structural rigidity and electrical performance of a PCB. The average thickness of
a PCB is around 0.5 mm to 0.7 mm and is expected to be less than 0.4 mm in
next few years.
Compared to the 0.7mm pitch BGA package used in smartphones a few years
ago, latest smartphones uses 0.4 mm pitch BGA package which offers a higher
pin count in smaller PCB real estate. The IC industry has already been working on
0.3mm pitch BGA technology for next generation microprocessors and FPGAs.

CHAIRMAN
IC substrate manufacturers have developed “mSAP” (Modified Semi Additive
Process) process which is capable of creating fine lines with better conductor
geometry. The HDI PCB industry is adapting to the mSAP process to tackle the
upcoming challenges. While 90% of production uses the Contact Imaging Process
today. Laser direct imaging (LDI) looks like a promising technology for the future.
With 0.3 mm pitch BGA, microvia pad/hole size is expected to be in the order of
150um/75um, respectively. While, PCB industry will continue to use CO2 laser
for drilling microvia in near future. New lasers with picosecond pulse are coming
to the market which offers finer holes and drastically lower thermal damage.
ALV (Any Layer Via) HDI technology is currently expensive and requires a state-
of-the-art facility. In coming years, 10 to 12 layer microvia layer buildup will be
common in next generation handheld and wearable devices.

CHAIRMAN
Rigid flex technology has enabled designers to replace the PCB connectors and
wire with single PCB, offering improved performance, reliability, and reduced
weight. Rigid Flex HDI offers designer to build next generation electronics
device which can follow the form. With wearable technology gaining
popularity, the use of Flex and Rigid Flex HDI technology will continue to grow.
Embedded Components
Since several years, various 3D-Integreation approaches have been explored to
keep the pace with the continuing trend towards electronics miniaturization
and densification. PCB embedding of passive and active devices has emerged
as a highly potential and scalable technology that enables a substantial
increment in the functionality and system performance. Though, the
technology is not new and has been used in high tech aerospace and military
applications, since 1980s.

CHAIRMAN
In recent times, the technology has only recently become a commercially viable
solution.
Embedded Passives

CHAIRMAN
Embedded passives are passive components (like resistor, capacitor, etc.)
buried into the substrate material. The IPC document “IPC-2316 – Design Guide
for Embedded Passive Devices Printed Circuit Board” provides necessary
information for incorporating embedded passive components in the PCB.
Embedding resistor with the circuit board uses “thin file” (subtractive process)
and “thick file” (additive process).
Thin file technology uses bi-metal alloy film like NiP, NiCr or NiCrAlSi, which is
deposited on the copper foil. The copper and nickel are then etched to create
nickel resistors with copper terminations. The technology offers limited
resistance range: 25 to 250 ohm/square.

CHAIRMAN
Thick film technology uses polymer thick films which are printed either
directly on the etched copper terminations or on screened silver plate
terminations. Interposing screened polymer silver paste between the copper
and resistor results in highly reliable and stable resistor. As multiple
materials can be printed on the same layer, thick film technology offers wide
resistance range: 20 ohm to 10 Mohm.
Embedded capacitors uses planar embedded capacitor laminates. These high
dielectric laminates are used to create planer capacitor layers which are
accessed using VIAs. New smaller packages discrete passive component also
known as embed discrete which can be buried in the PCB materials adds new
possibility with the embedded component technology.

CHAIRMAN
The advantage of using embedded passives components are:
- Improved system performance: Improved signal integrity, reduced EMI and
reduce parasitic.
- Achieve higher active circuit density and board yield.
- Reduction in circuit board size and weight.
- Reduction in assembly cost.
Embedded Actives
Embedded actives refer to the technology of embedding active devices into
the circuit board. It is most commonly found in integrated circuit packaging.
As integrated chips are turning into chip-sets, 3D packaging of the integrated
circuits is quite common.

CHAIRMAN
Embedding ICs within the circuit board may vary based on the following
approaches:
1) Embedded wafer level package
2) Embedded Chip Buildup
3) Chip in polymer
Substrate materials
Glass fiber / epoxy prepregs have dominated the PCB market for decades. FR-4
has become the standard substrate for PCBs, which uses only woven fiberglass
and epoxy. Traditional printed circuit board (PCB) laminate materials have their
limitations to support these high-speed and RF/Microwave applications. The
demand for higher frequency and faster data transmission rates has been
rapidly increasing.

CHAIRMAN
New substrate materials like Resin Coated Copper (RCC) / Resin Coated Film (RCF), Liquid
Crystal Polymer (LCP), and vacuum-laminated films have been introduced. PCB laminate
manufacturers like ROGERS, ISOLA, ARLON, ITEQ are offering high performance – low and
ultra-low dielectric loss (Df < 0.007) and cost effective solutions with the rapidly changing
electronics market.
Following image represents the performance v/s cost comparison of the few substrates in
the market.

CHAIRMAN
Category Relative Cost wrt.
FR4 substrate
Tier 1 1x
Tier 2 1x
Tier 3 1x
Tier 4 1.5x
Tier 5 3x

CHAIRMAN
Creating your next embedded carrier board
Toradex computer-on-modules make use of the latest PCB technology to create
high performance embedded computer modules. Toradex’s embedded
computing solutions (system-on-modules and carrier boards) takes advantage of
both HDI technology and industry standard multilayer technology. This unique
combination enables our customers to create next generation embedded
solutions at a very low cost.
Accelerated development and reduced design risks: In order to speed up your
development time and reduce the development risk associated with custom
carrier board development, Toradex provides reference designs of our carrier
boards in electronic format.

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CHAIRMAN
These reference designs include all schematics, layout, and IPC-7351 compliant
component libraries in Altium designer format. By reusing hardware subsystems
already deployed on our off-the-shelf carrier board solutions, you can ensure that
you are starting with a design which works and has been designed to specifically
support Toradex’s computer-on-modules.
Toradex Carrier Board Design Guide helps circuit designers to gain better
understanding of the embedded computer module solution offered by Toradex
and other interfaces in-order to create a custom carrier board.
The Toradex Pinout Designer is a powerful tool for configuring the pin muxing of
the Colibri and Apalis modules. The tool allows comparing the interfaces of
different Toradex modules. It's easy to check whether existing carrier boards are
compatible with the latest Toradex modules.

CHAIRMAN
Custom carrier board design often includes high speed interfaces like PCIe,
SATA, USB, Ethernet, etc. Toradex layout design guide provides a wealth of
very valuable technical information to help you with designing your own
custom carrier board. Important information regarding circuit design and
layout helps ensure that you get your design right first time.
Manufacturing: Updated Bill of material for Toradex carrier boards is available
on the Ciiva BOM management tool. Ciiva provides a fully traceable, version-
controlled BOM management.
Generating 3D design data: Toradex PCB footprint libraries include accurate 3D
step models for most of the components. During design phase, it helps provide
designers the provision to inspect the carrier board in 3D view. It allows PCB
design engineers to work in collaboration with the industrial design team. 3D-
step models can output of the custom carrier can be generated and can be
shared with the industrial engineering team and vise-versa.

CHAIRMAN
Please refer the below for more information;
http://developer.toradex.com/hardware-resources/arm-family/carrier-board-design
www.developer.toradex.com
www.toradex.com

|www.toradex.com Toradex® is a registered trademark of Montadex GmbH 12/1/2015 23
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Technological Trends in Circuit Board Design & Manufacturing <40

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