Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1467744
MAY 2022 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 71 Today, we see 370HR, one of our workhorse products that was introduced in 2003, still going strong. Demand remains at a high level. Johnson: Okay, that's not declining? Kelley: at curve is broadening; there's still the high Tg FR-4s, whose growth is mostly tied to overall economic growth. But it's a very com- petitive segment. ere are always those who try to be low-cost producers coming aer your share. But 370HR is a very robust product. It's reliable and customers don't want to change. While you'll find that everyone has their own definitions for loss segments of materials, we haven't seen significant demand changes for mid- or low-loss materials in the United States. You see prototypes and small volumes, but much of the volume is in Asia. In the U.S. there's a combination of the stan- dard and high loss materials, and growing amounts of very low, ultra-low, extremely low— whatever your adjective is—materials. In Asia, it's the full range. In Europe, you have a lot of FR-4 products because the automotive industry is still going strong there. Many prototypes start there and it's important to support those. On the OEM side, you have many key telecom and auto- motive companies. So we see demand for FR-4 products on one hand, and high performance materials, including for millimeter-wave appli- cations, on the other. at includes automotive ADAS, 77 GHz radar systems and the like. As we talk with our customers, it's important for us to look at our ability not just to supply them materials, but to help solve problems. In my role, I'm always asking, "What are our cus- tomers' unmet needs?" Whether that's in the automotive sector for charging stations, where materials have to pass CAF testing at a thou- sand volts or more, or in the extremely low loss 5G applications we discussed. ose are some of the emerging requirements that I need to understand. I need to determine, "Does Isola have an opportunity to develop a product to meet those requirements?" Johnson: at's got to be an ongoing thing. Kelley: Yes. At any given time, we would like to have products at various stages of our devel- opment process. Historically, Isola hadn't offered a lot of halogen-free materials so we're looking to fill in our portfolio, partly to sup- port hybrid builds where somebody might want to use an extremely low loss product in certain layers, but something less expensive in others while keeping the whole package halogen-free. We have another product com- ing that's a very low loss halogen-free mate- rial—not as low as TerraGreen 400G, but it fits a niche in loss performance at a very attrac- tive cost point. Many of our customers use the term "loss for cost." Johnson: at's catchy. Additional lab equipment.