ECIT active with OEMs on embedded passive testing.
There
are currently a number of active consortiums dealing with electronics
topics in North America. The Emerging Critical Interconnect Technology
(ECIT) is just one of the groups that is supported by the IPC. Its goal
is to aid North American PCB manufacturing by providing a site to
conduct state-of-the-art research to advance PCB design and
manufacturing processes.
The ECIT's facility at the
Navel Surface Warfare Center in Crane, IN was established in 1941 as a
weapons depot. It has evolved into a highly specialized facility
dedicated to the development of high tech electronics, ordinance and
other warfare support, with 57% of its 3,400 employees being
scientists, engineers and technicians. The facility has a complete and
up-to-date PCB manufacturing facility, a comprehensive failure analysis
laboratory, an environmental test and evaluation laboratory, and
extensive computer modeling capabilities to support this goal.
One
of the first industry projects to be undertaken at ECIT is the Embedded
Passives Test Program. This project was designed to provide a structure
where industry and military could work together to adopt the embedded
passives technology into real world products for both commercial and
military applications.
The ECIT Embedded Passives Test Bed
The
first meeting of this project in July of 2004 was attended by a diverse
group of participants, including PCB fabricators, OEMs, material
suppliers, equipment suppliers, software tool providers and academia.
The ECIT team is currently comprised of over 30 member organizations.
Since that first meeting, the ECIT project team has made significant
strides forward to meeting the outlined project goals:
- Maintain an awareness of emerging embedded passive component activity.
- Provide facilities for R&D and small-scale manufacturing.
- Demonstrate embedded passive component manufacturing processes.
- Facilitate full supply chain participation.
- Distribute embedded passive component expertise to the North American fabrication base.
Standards development. ECIT
has contributed leadership in the standards development process by
providing the chairs for the D-51 sub-committee activities including
the Embedded Passive Device Design Guide, IPC-2316 and Standard for
Determining Current Carrying Capacity, IPC-2152. Since IPC Works 2006,
the IPC-2316 "Design Guide for Embedded Passive Device Printed Boards"
draft has completed its industry review and is being prepared for the
balloting process. In addition to chair activities, ECIT staff has
actively participated in the Materials, Performance and Test Methods
sub-committees of D-50.
Conferences and workshops. Staff
assistance was given to the IPC for the development, organization and
chairing of the 3rd International Conference on Embedded Components, a
conference held in May 2006 in Chelmsford, MA. During that conference,
ECIT staff conducted a workshop on the "Design and Manufacture of
Formed Embedded Passive Components." In October of 2006, ECIT hosted a
two-day intensive interactive workshop on "Designing and Building a
Board with Embedded Passive Components."
High frequency test vehicles. From
the outset, members of ECIT proposed the development of standard test
vehicles, especially at frequencies up to 12GHz, to be a number one
priority project. Meetings were held at Crane during IPC semi-annual
events and followed up with conference calls. All disciplines of the
ECIT team participated in this development. Test vehicles were designed
to characterize commercial capacitor and resistor materials performance
up to 12GHz. Suppliers have contributed capacitor and resistor
materials, and ECIT has fabricated the test vehicles. Testing has
started this month and includes ESD, temperature cycling, humidity and
convection reflow simulating PCA manufacturing assembly processes. It
will be completed by February 2007.
Resistor learning test vehicle. This
test vehicle was designed to assist PCB fabricators with characterizing
their resistor manufacturing process. TVs have been designed for both
metal thin-film and polymer thick-film materials. Most of the proof of
concept TV fabrication at Crane is complete, and data is being reduced
and analyzed. In addition to registration, characterization initial and
post process resistance vs. land pad design, feature sizes, orientation
and location on the manufacturing panel have been determined. This test
vehicle is available to the industry.
Manufacturing process demonstration. All
demonstration fabrication has been completed. ECIT member material
suppliers have contributed samples of their resistor and capacitor
materials for the fabrication of test vehicles at the ECIT facilities
to demonstrate that these materials are manufacturable in most PCB
fabrication shops. The test vehicles used for this demonstration were
borrowed from the recent Advanced Embedded Passive Technology (AEPT)
project and are known as TV2-R and TV2-C for resistors and capacitors,
respectively. The AEPT has developed data for these TVs, making them
attractive and practical to use for the ECIT project. In addition to
the process demonstration, some of the TVs have been put through
environmental tests by OEM members.
Product emulators.
At IPC Works in late 2005, the ECIT team offered OEMs the opportunity
to participate in this project. OEMs with a heritage design that
contained characteristics attractive for embedding passive components
were invited to submit their designs to ECIT as an emulator candidate.
If selected, the ECIT staff would work with the OEM on choosing the
best components to embed and the best material(s) to use. ECIT would
redesign the board(s) within the constraints established by the OEM,
manufacture the bare board(s), perform reliability studies on the
embedded components and deliver bare board(s) to the OEM. The OEM in
turn would assemble and test the board(s) comparing the results to the
heritage design.
The cost of the redesign, bare board
manufacture and testing is borne by ECIT, while the cost of assembly
and test is borne by the OEM. Mentor Graphics Expedition will be used
with its integrated parametric embedded passives module, and modeling
and analysis tools will be used to evaluate the resulting design. OEM
participation requires the companies' willingness to share the
performance results with industry.
Several candidate
designs have been submitted by OEMs and the ECIT is in the selection
process. The design effort is expected to begin in early December 2006.
Formed
embedded passive component guidelines. All of the lessons learned
during the demonstration process, fabrication and testing of the test
vehicles, and fabrication of emulator boards as well as material and
process selection guidelines, are well documented and are being
compiled into a single text to be made available to the industry in
2007.
The mission of the ECIT Program is to assist
North American Industry implement embedded passive component
technology. Considerable information and assistance is available to PCB
manufacturers and OEMs wishing to implement embedded passives, much of
which is funded by the ECIT. For further information on participation
contact the IPC (www.ipc.org). PCD&M
Richard Snogren is a member of the technical staff at Coretec Inc. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
