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Printed Circuit Design & Fab Magazine

PORTLAND, OR - Soldering chips to PCBs may become a thing of the past due to research on copper materials sponsored by Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) at the Georgia Institute of Technology, according to industry reports.

As copper melts at near 2000^o F, chips cannot be attached to a PCB using molten copper, but Kohl's group has reportedly grown copper connections between pillars on chips at room temperature.

According to professor Paul Kohl of Georgia Tech, Solder "has many limitations, especially for the very high-frequency signals in modern computer systems, as solder will only form spherical bumps [while other shapes] work better with high-frequency signals".

The research group has reportedly developed a method to turn commonly used copper traces on PCBs into ultra-high frequency coaxial transmission lines, and using this new electroless plating process, future chips could be attached to circuit boards without solder using copper pillars.

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