Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1511130
NOVEMBER 2023 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 63 guides, there are many aspects that Averatek has worked on to grow this into different pas- sives. For the future, they're looking at ways to embed chips, so it's pretty exciting. That is exciting stuff. I remember when 3-mil line and space was the state-of-the-art, or even the bleeding edge if you go back far enough. It's nice to see this type of technology come around because it certainly gives us a chance to leapfrog over where Asia is today. Tell me about some of the advantages of this technology. When you look at the circuit board today, we're locked in at 3-and-3; some folks can do 2-and-2 in lines and spaces, but that might be by accident. If you can get down to 25-micron (1-mil) lines and spaces, you can reduce the size of the circuit board. Already the chips have gone smaller and smaller in terms of pitch. Half-millimeter BGAs are fairly common and we keep hearing it will go down to 0.35 mil, 0.3 mil, and who knows from there. Well, you can't route that out of a pattern very easily with even a 2-mil line and space. You have to get down to the 1-mil line and space. at helps, but when you're doing that, you're reducing layer counts and the number of microvias in a structure, which can improve reliability. You don't need as many stacked microvias. When I was at Averatek, we looked at situations of reconfiguring 12-layer boards with many sub- assemblies down as far as a two-layer board. It's quite amazing when getting to the ultra- fine lines and spaces. Oh, absolutely John. Look for Par t 2 of this inter view in the December 2023 issue of Design007 Magazine. DESIGN007 Steve Williams is president of The Right Approach Consulting. He is also an independent certi- fied coach, trainer, and speaker with the John Maxwell team. Empa researchers want to accelerate the develop- ment of urgently needed new energy storage sys- tems with the help of the Aurora battery robot. The Aurora project is part of the European research initia- tive Battery2030+, which was recently awarded over 150 million euros in funding by the EU. In addition, the project is part of the ETH Board's "Open Research Data" initiative, which promotes digitization and free access to research data. The world urgently needs new types of energy stor- age. Developing completely new concepts for batteries and exploring their poten- tial is currently a lengthy process, as Corsin Batta- glia, head of Empa's Mate- rials for Energy Conversion laboratory in Dübendorf and professor at ETH Zurich, emphasizes: "Our goal is to accelerate this process." The robotic platform is currently being further developed in the Empa laboratories together with the company Chemspeed Technologies AG. Empa researcher Enea Svaluto-Ferro is implementing the work steps and "training" Aurora. "While the robot weighs, doses and assembles the individual cell components with constant precision, initiates and completes charging cycles precisely and performs other repeti- tive steps, researchers can use the generated data to drive the innova- tion process forward," says Svaluto-Ferro. (Source: Empa) Accelerating Battery Research With Robots