Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1541985
DECEMBER 2025 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 55 many more designs that require this. We've proba- bly built 20 new designs this year that require these coins, and that's totally different than the world of HDI. Now, at some point, these worlds will collide, and you will need to combine these technologies, given where technology is going. We are hearing a lot more about every-layer- microvia boards. What would make a chip micro- carrier board distinctly different from a printed cir- cuit board that is every-layer-microvia? The biggest differentiator tends to be size. A semi- conductor chip is typically a very small square or, in some cases, a rectangle. Chip carriers must be larger than the semiconductor chips, but still rela- tively small. Typically, these are very high-density boards. To fan out and ultimately attach to a circuit board, you need to go through multiple layers, and those boards tend to have microvias on every layer. Is that part of advanced packaging technology? Absolutely. Asia has been utilizing this advanced packaging technology for many years. The U.S. relin- quished its leadership in that arena when manufac- turing shifted largely overseas in the late 1990s and early 2000s. And this technology has mostly been used in consumer electronics that is packaged to be very small, such as cellphones. Where we are seeing a shift now is the need for very high-reliabil- ity applications that also have this small packaging. The reliability requirement differs considerably from what is required in most consumer applications. Therefore, advanced packaging for high reliability for critical applications differs, at least in terms of materials and the processes required. Additionally, there is now a demand to have many things made in the U.S., and we are very much in the midst of that ramp. We're building circuit boards with 20 and 30 layers that have four and five stacked microvias, as well as various blind, buried, and back drills. These are boards that take forever to build. You have to be really careful building them because you could spend 15 weeks getting these boards to the end of the line, only to see them fail. Your process controls must be very tight throughout the build to ensure good integrity, accurate registration, high-quality hole walls, and excellent plating. All of that makes life more interesting and more challenging. It's defi- nitely exciting. Achieving tighter process control and adding interim process steps that ensure quality and reli- ability has become a sub-industry within electron- ics manufacturing that is growing and expanding. Is process control and metrology harder or easier than it used to be? A lot of good progress is being made on that front. At ASC, we've developed our own techniques for achieving very tight process controls given our existing technology. We are also working with our