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May 2016 • The PCB Design Magazine 45 Researchers have created extremely small, thermally stable magnetic particles. These CoFe2C nanoparticles have magnetic properties comparable to some rare earth magnets, the strongest permanent magnets ever created, at sizes as small as 5 nanometers, a million times smaller than an ant. The next generation of thermally stable data stor - age devices demands materials that are highly magnet- ic in a specific direction at small particle sizes. The new CoFe2C nanoparticles accomplish this goal and can lead to nano-magnets that work at room temperature. One of the greatest problems hindering the field of nano-magnetism is that small particle sizes tend to mean small magnetic anisotropy. A large magnetic an - isotropy is absolutely crucial to these nanoparticles be- cause it prevents fluctuations of the magnetic moment, a phenomenon that limits the use of these particles in memory storage and many other applications. To become technologically relevant, nano-magnets must be small, have a large magnetic anisotropy, and be thermally stable. Researchers at Virginia Common - wealth University have computationally investigated CoFe2C nanoparticles with mixed CoxC and FexC car- bide phases that fit this exact description. After prom- ising theoretical results, the researchers successfully synthesized the CoFe2C particles with the properties that were computationally expected. The newly syn- thesized particles have been proven thermally stable up to 790K at sizes as small as 5 nanometers. These CoFe2C nanoparticles possess the unique characteristics of both small size and a large anisotropy, and could represent the future of data storage devices. Small and Powerful: Pushing the Boundaries of Nano-Magnets the CAD application automatically creates an ink resistor shape using its dynamic parametric ink resistor generator. The CAD application has within it several layers representing different values of ink, and the generator will choose the appropriate type of resistor ink from those lay- ers. Then the generator will dictate the size and shape of the ink resistor according to the values specified by the schematic. At any time though, the designer can manually override these set- tings to change the layer, size and shape as re- quired. The parametric ink resistor part within the hybrid CAD application will also carry with it all the attributes needed for its creation. These include; overlapping of resistor ink over the connecting pads, the specific value of ink used (e.g., 10, 100, 1000, 10k, 1m, etc.), layer trim- ming, laser trimming, and overglaze informa- tion. And as mentioned before, these values can be manually altered by the designer to fit any unique size and shape requirements of design. By changing an ink resistor using the dynamic parametric ink resistor generator of the CAD ap- plication, the designer will assure that the final ink resistor will still carry the required resistance values that it should. For example; the paramet- ric ink resistor generator will increase the width of the ink resistor proportionally if the designer should decrease the length, etc. The remainder of the hybrid design process is going to be very similar to what the PCB de- signer is used to. DRCs will need to be run, silk- screen and documentation will need to be cre- ated and finalized, and the manufacturing files will need to be generated. And then…congratu- lations! You have successfully made it through your first hybrid design and although scary, you got the job done. And with that, our series on the basics of hybrid design is concluded. There is certainly much more that we could talk about in the creation of hybrids, but let's save that for another time. For now though, we've walked you through the basics and my hope is that you now have a better grasp on this new and excit- ing arena of hybrid design. And before I leave you, I want to once again give a shout-out to my colleague Bernd Pflueger. Bernd has a tremendous depth of knowledge and experience in the world of hybrid design, and I am extremely grateful for his help with this series. PCBDESIGN Tim Haag is customer support and training manager for Intercept Technology. THE BASICS OF HYBRID DESIGN, PART 3