Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1543584
40 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2026 well as a review of solder masks and surface finishes. Examples of how material thick- ness can be reduced include using flexible resin-coated copper and thinner polyimide layers in flex constructions, as well as incor- porating an additional conduc- tor layer in the build-up. Bend radii could be reduced by pre-rout- ing, depth routing, or laser ablation, depending on design complexity. Dyconex has addressed the demand for finer lines by adopting additive technology. Their SAP process enables 80-micron pads on 110-micron pitch, with 8-micron lines and spaces, and two lines between pads. Steim gave several examples of applications of fine-line circuits: cables, inductive positioning sensor coils, increased pixel density imaging, pack- aging for flip chip, and photonic ICs. Challenges in fine-line PCB production include seed-layer adhesion, inspection, and repair. Surface finishes have a significant influence on bending performance, with the brittle nickel in ENIG giving the worst results and nickel-free finishes being preferred. But perhaps the biggest challenges include the need for investment in equipment, and increasingly frag- ile products demanding higher cleanroom and production stan- dards. Dyconex achieved success on multiple projects in series production by addressing the sum of many chal- lenges and has continued, together with their customers, on an ongoing learn- ing curve to push the limits further. Henk Berkel, senior application engineer at Multek in the Neth- erlands, discussed how new technologies are pushing inter- connects to the next level of inte- gration. He put a perspective on the current situation by referenc- ing an overview of myriad integra- tion options from Fraunhofer, who saw system integration as key to helping manu- facturing companies to remain competitive in high- wage countries and defend their market leadership. Berkel commented that although certain "mature" integrated technologies, such as embedded resis- tors and capacitors, remained a small niche market, embedded copper coin technologies for thermal management have now become mainstream, espe- cially in Massive MIMO applications in 5G and future wireless networks. He sees artificial intelligence as a new world, remarking that AI data centres are extremely power hungry—up to 350 megawatts and more—before exploring the complexity of NVIDIA devices and considering system densities and power consump- tions. He believes that the surging demand for arti- ficial intelligence and machine learning could lead to power losses that, from a cooling perspective, would be prohibitively expensive to manage. Looking ahead, he considered that although the incorporation of decoupling capacitors and MOSFETs directly into a single PCB substrate would significantly streamline design and reduce cost, the thermal and cooling implications require careful analysis, particularly with regard to manu- facturing, cost, and system reliability. Berkel described new packag- ing concepts such as CoWoP assembly (chip on wafer on plat- form PCB), where chip-plus-inter- poser is bonded directly onto an advanced platform PCB, using mSAP processing to embed the RDL interposer into the substrate- like PCB. His final topic was humanoid robot H e n k B e rke l D r. R o l a n d S te i m " Changes in fine-line PCB production include seed-layer adhesion, inspection, and repair."