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64 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MAY 2019 Feature Interview As a global laminate supplier with a large product offering, TUC is at the forefront of the growing customer demands that stem from a number of market segments pushing next-gen- eration products. In an interview with Nolan Johnson, TUC North American President Al- an Cochrane talks about the company's shift toward trending areas—including HDI, halo- gen-free, and RF—and how strategies like the adoption of thinner glass styles have helped make it all possible. Nolan Johnson: Alan, please give us some back- ground on yourself and TUC. Alan Cochrane: I've been with TUC for a little over eight years, and I've been in the indus- try since 1978. I started in research and devel- opment at TRW (now Northrop Grumman). I was on the fabricator side until 2010 when I joined TUC. We've seen a substantial amount of growth, including $425 million in 2016, $525 million in 2017, and $630 million in 2018. TUC has been in business since '97, making copper-clad laminates. TUC started with mid- Tg materials and quickly moved up to high Tg as well as halogen-free products in the mid- loss range. Since the marketplace keeps hav- ing more and more needs, we moved into low- loss and super low-loss categories. We break things down into a few different market seg- ments: high-speed digital and HDI applications in that marketplace. We also have product of- ferings for the RF and the millimeter-wave ap- plications as well as a small segment that is the high-Dk specialty materials. The biggest focus these days is mainly in the high-speed digital and RF areas. And there's some crossover between the two of them. We have a product offering in the high-speed digi- tal that's for the 56-Gbps applications that are out there, which is pretty well entrenched. That's the 12.5–14.5-GHz range that we've been servicing with a number of products. It's an APPE-based product lineup with different fillers, etc. We've done a lot of interesting test- ing with large OEMs to meet their needs. We are releasing a product soon called T4 for 25–28-GHz applications. The magic number, from an OEM standpoint, seems to be a 0.7 dB loss per inch at 25 GHz with a 5-mil trace. So, as we get up into the 25–28-GHz applica- Laminate Suppliers Face Increasing Demands From Customers