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JULY 2026 I I-CONNECT007 MAGAZINE 41 On the volume side, the economics improve with scale but not as dramatically as in standard technology. The fixed costs of process develop- ment, material qualification, and inspection tooling are higher and must be amortized across produc- tion quantities. For low-volume, high-complexity programs, which describe much of the aerospace and defense work we support at ASC, the per-unit cost is high but justified by the performance and form factor advantages ELIC enables. For high-volume commercial applications, the yield model must be very well characterized before production transition, because the cost of a field failure driven by a latent via-stack defect is orders of magnitude greater than additional upfront process development. Supplier Readiness: The Underappreciated Variable ELIC cannot be attempted without prior investment in equipment, materials, process chemistry, and the engineering talent to manage their interactions. At ASC, our path into ELIC capability was built on years of HDI production experience, our UHDI platform with SAP, and targeted investments in laser drill, registration, and electroplating systems specifically sized for ELIC tolerances. Organizations evaluating ELIC suppliers should ask questions: What is your production yield data on comparable builds? What are your cross-section documentation protocols at each build interval? How deep is your process engineering support during design development? Those conversations will tell you more about a fabricator's actual ELIC capability than any capability statement document. Closing Perspective ELIC is a powerful technology. For the right design, in the right hands, it delivers density and performance capabilities that are not achievable through any other PCB fabrication approach short of IC substrate technology. But it is not a casual upgrade from HDI. In ELIC, the small things are no longer small. The designers and programs that get the most out of ELIC are those who engage early, share design intent before routing is locked, design within production-ready ranges rather than minimum- capability limits, and choose fabrication partners with demonstrated process maturity. At ASC, we have built that capability deliberately and incremen- tally, and we look forward to the continued evolu- tion of this technology as the semiconductor pack- aging landscape makes ELIC not just compelling, but necessary. I-CONNECT007 Anaya Vardya is president and CEO of American Standard Circuits; co-author of The Printed Circuit Designer's Guide to… Funda- mentals of RF/Microwave PCBs and Flex and Rigid- Flex Fundamentals. He is the author of Thermal Management: A Fabri- cator's Perspective, The Printed Circuit Design- er's Guide to DFM Essen- tials, and The Companion Guide to Flex and Rigid-Flex Fundamentals. Visit our library to download these and other free, educational titles. Table 2: The impact of different design variables on ELIC. DESIGN VARIABLE DIRECTLY AFFECTS Via aspect ratio Dielectric thickness ↔ copper fill quality ↔ reliability Registration tolerance Stack depth ↔ capture pad size ↔ cumulative yield Solder mask definition Copper spacing ↔ pad isolation ↔ assembly yield Lamination cycle count Material thermal exposure ↔ CTE behavior ↔ Z-axis stability Stacked vs. staggered via Thermal cycling durability ↔ void risk ↔ fabrication cost