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58 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2019 Interview by Nolan Johnson I-CONNECT007 Eduardo Benmayor, general manager, dis- cusses Aismalibar's work on thermal man- agement substrates, trends in the automotive industry worldwide and new product develop- ments. Nolan Johnson: Eduardo, would you be so kind as to start us out with a quick overview of Aismalibar, what you do, what products you deliver, and what markets you serve? Eduardo Benmayor: Of course. Aismalibar is a very old company producing copper-clad laminates for the PCB industry for many, many years. It was one of the first companies established in approximately '36 in Europe, and started the production of copper-clad laminates in 1958 together with the starting of the PCB industry at that time. It was one of the first companies in Europe to produce copper-clad laminates in mass production for the European market. Aismalibar on Thermal Management Substrates and Automotive Since then, Aismalibar has developed different product ranges from XPC-FR2 at the beginning of the industry—a phenolic-based material. Then, we went to FR- 4s, which were a more technical level. After, Aismalibar launched the CEM1 material. Aismalibar was very famous because of the CEM1 material; it was the first CEM1 lead-free to be launched in the industry, and still is one of the leading materials in the world. It's considered the best material for CEM1 substrates. Then, Aismalibar grew up and started to develop the CEM3 materials for plated through-holes. From there, we jumped into thermal management with aluminium substrates, which is one of our core businesses today. Today, the Spain factory focuses on the very high-end materials dedicated to thermal management on PCBs. A release of temperature on the boards is very important, and it's a Figure 1: Aismalibar's Cobritherm HTC material in a customer application. Eduardo Benmayor