Aluminia Thin Film Circuit Boards
Aluminia Thin Film Circuit Boards
(OP)
Hi mates
just want to ask if anyone has ever worked with alumina thin film circuit boards. How would you rate them in terms of cost and use. Am planning to use it for a high speed circuit. would it work and what is the cost like.
Jeffrey
just want to ask if anyone has ever worked with alumina thin film circuit boards. How would you rate them in terms of cost and use. Am planning to use it for a high speed circuit. would it work and what is the cost like.
Jeffrey





RE: Aluminia Thin Film Circuit Boards
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RE: Aluminia Thin Film Circuit Boards
Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com
RE: Aluminia Thin Film Circuit Boards
RE: Aluminia Thin Film Circuit Boards
Assuming you're thinking about thick film, for small quantities they have a high per-unit cost. For larger volumes the costs can drop quite dramatically to the extent where they are used in commodity markets such as automotive, but you need the volume throughput to get this economy of scale. Alumina can handle fairly high power applications, and on beryllia can handle very high power densities. Frequency limits tend to be due to the dielectric properties of the substrate, which are generally better and considerably more stable than for FR4.
Thin film - where it's used at all these days - is the preserve of high-end military and telecoms. Expensive, and for low power applications. I'm not even sure my old place - TT Welwyn - still has a thin film capability.
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RE: Aluminia Thin Film Circuit Boards
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RE: Aluminia Thin Film Circuit Boards
Peter
RE: Aluminia Thin Film Circuit Boards
They are expensive, though, and you typically have to place them inside of another housing (often one that is hermetically sealed) to protect the semiconductor chips from humidity and abuse.
Nowadays, even very high frequency circuits are available in leadless chip carrier plastic packages, and direct wirebonding to the chips is much rarer. Today, you are much more likely to see a flexible substrate with such packaged chips soldered on. Those substrates are available from Arlon, Taconic, Rogers, etc.
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Maguffin Microwave wireless design consulting
RE: Aluminia Thin Film Circuit Boards
We use Alumina all the time around here and I agree with the above responses; it is much more expensive. We only use it when we are attaching ICs in die form, and want to go below the 0.004" trace width that FR-4 can handle (typically).
Z