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JULY 2025 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 37 Guide to... More Secrets of High- Speed PCBs, I hadn't considered it a medium for passing inside know- ledge to the next generation of PCB designers and fabricators. I aimed at PCB designers and specifiers who wanted to learn how to navigate our complex supply chains as materi- als and products weave from one country to another during the man- ufacturing process. However, to my surprise, at a recent Rick Hartley class, Neil Chamberlain, Polar's sig- nal integrity product manager, noted that during coffee breaks, millennial and Gen Alpha budding PCB design- ers didn't look at their cell phones; they immersed themselves in More Secrets. Perhaps there is still life in ink on paper. As in most of my columns, much of the information in More Secrets con- cerns what happens to your design once it is outside the comforting world of a CAD system and immersed in the practical challenges of an etch pro- cess or a substitute material from a new or alternate supplier. Students and recent graduates will have little exposure to this until they chance on the first design that doesn't behave as the data says it should. Embracing More Materials One topic both new and existing designers need to concern them- selves with is the proliferation of new base materials and new ways of put- ting them together. In a previous arti- cle on UHDI, I noted how sub-20 micron designs require major fac- tory (new factory?) investments and therefore are limited to high vol- ume, or specialist applications where the fabricator has government fund- ing to move ahead. However, new chemistries are enabling a bridge down from the 75-micron limits of traditional HDI to 20 microns or so with new plating lines and chemis- tries, but without the cleanrooms and vast learning curve of sub-20-micron technology. One speaker at the recent sum- mer EIPC conference in Edinburgh referred to SAP as a learning cliff: mSAP and advanced mSAP, which operate in the 75-to-20-micron line width arena, are a learning curve rather than the cliff experience of SAP. To meet the challenges of these smaller line widths, new materials with thinner foils, thinner cores, and prepregs are required. The breadth of materials seems relentless, and at Polar, we must constantly keep our material partner libraries updated. Conclusion A new young cohort of PCB profes- sionals is emerging with an arse- nal of powerful tools to deploy compared with previous genera- tions. However, experience is still required to fully understand the industry's embedded knowledge, especially as today's engineers must navigate more materials and build-up scenarios than ever before in PCB history. DESIGN007 Martyn Gaudion is the managing director of Polar Instruments Ltd. To read past columns, click here. Martyn is the author of The Printed Circuit Designer's Guide to… Secrets of High-Speed PCBs, Parts 1 and 2, and, most recently, More Secrets of High- Speed PCBs " A new young cohort of PCB professionals is emerging with an arsenal of powerful tools to deploy compared with previous generations. T H E P U LS E "