Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1361971
70 PCB007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2021 Hunrath: ere are probably applications for this material in aerospace, outer space, where we need that extra reliability combined with fracture toughness—extra thermal reliabili- ty combined with fracture toughness. ere are probably a lot more applications for this material. Gay: Yes, exactly. Johnson: You're manufacturing it in one facili- ty right now? Gay: We developed the material in Düren, Ger- many, and that facility can run the material, but because most of the automotive work is done in Asia, we've set up our facility there for building this material. It is where most of the material will be manufactured. We have inven- tory in place, so the necessary materials will be readily available for customers that want to do testing, UL qualifications, process evaluations, and so forth. Johnson: Finally, let's talk about pricing for this new material. Hunrath: From a material cost standpoint, this will be a premium over epoxy, but less than polyimide. It fits that in-between space. As Mi- chael pointed out, automotive applications are very cost sensitive. Both the material costs and some of the building blocks are such that you should be able to make a whole lot of those ap- plications, and that's another good thing about this. I think there are some aerospace appli- cations that have historically been polyimide. I think that this material in some of those ap- plications could outperform polyimide. Poly- imide is still very decomposition resistant, but it does get brittle when exposed to heat. Johnson: Which limits its lifetime. Gay: Exactly. Hunrath: at is a drawback. Anything that sees break shock and vibration in copper structures, this material could be a good fit. Gay: inking about that from an automotive perspective, your automobile is going to see a lot of vibration over the lifetime of the car. It's