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66 PCB007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2024 surfaces with a micro-etch and an anti-bleed treatment before inkjet printing. She concluded that the breakthrough of ink- jet solder mask is happening; there are already more than 35 installations worldwide, and OEMs are validating the product. Ashley Steers titled his presentation, "Solder mask challenges and unique selling points of inkjet solder mask." He commented that Elec- tra Polymers is celebrating 40 years of servic- ing the PCB market. e company has diver- sified into printed electronics and wafer-level packaging, but PCB ink materials remain more than 50% of its global revenue, and Elec- tra established leadership in the technology of inkjet solder mask, having several years' expe- rience with customers who switched to 100% inkjet. e company has invested heavily in inkjet solder mask manufacturing capacity and is expected to be the world's largest supplier by the end of 2024. Steers addressed some of the internal chal- lenges faced by present-day PCB manufactur- ers; one of the largest is finding and keeping skilled personnel. He listed generational and environmental benefits of inkjet, emphasis- ing that it was a computer-driven digital tech- nique with a clean, hands-off process and the opportunity to automate. Furthermore, it was a shorter process, requiring fewer people and overhead, and it is no longer the skilled art that screen printing has been. e risk of defects is less—the result of an enclosed, filtered coating environment and no wet inks exposed to ovens or unfiltered envi- ronments. Inkjet is a fully additive process, and there is no developing stage that could under- cut fine features. Environmental and regulator y benefits include greatly reduced water and power consumption and no volatile organic com- pounds. Electra's ink complies with REACH and other related regulations. In addition to meeting industry specification requirements, the repeatability of an automated, front-end- driven process is a significant positive point when selling to OEMs and CEMs, together with its flexibility, sustainability, and scope for Industry 4.0 integration. In his conclusion, Steers said, "Inkjet solder mask has arrived; it's no longer on the way." Dr. Luca Gautero reviewed and summarised the information presented in the Peter de Vrieze demonstration, then invited questions from the webinar audience of more than 100 people. Bodegom very capably managed the Q&A session, as members of the panel gen- erously shared the benefit of their experience in response to questions about future devel- opments, factors determining edge definition, surface treatment recommendations, compar- ative material costs, typical thicknesses for dif- ferent applications, managing panel warpage, accuracy of solder mask-defined pads, resis- tance to new metallic finish chemistries, com- patibility with third-party automation systems, expected print-head life, and printing multiple colours. So much additional knowledge came out of this session that it was effectively a tech- nology tutorial in its own right. Bodegom brought proceedings to a close, with grateful thanks to members of the panel, to SÜSS MicroTec for hosting the event, and to all those who attended. As I had expected, the webinar proved to be a no-nonsense learning opportunity and a con- firmation that inkjet solder mask is no longer "on the way." It has arrived. PCB007 Click here to view this webinar. Pete Starkey is a technical editor for I-Connect007.