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July 2014 • The PCB Magazine 23 TCF) and Thales Corporate Services. This proj- ect resulted in a successful product develop- ment for a new technology, which is now used in Europe to manufacture several million units per month. In this project, the benefits of PCB technology have been modified in a way that it is fully functional in the area of cost-effective chip packaging fabrication. In this project, the chip-in-polymer process has been developed and industrialised, which offers a reliable and cost-effective embedding technology for the realisation of modules and SiP development. This technology is applied in several projects with industry and R&D centers. The industrialization of the technol- ogy within the "HERMES" project was a great achievement for the electronics industry in Eu- rope. Without funding from the EU the part- ners would not have seen sufficient benefits and incentives to develop these new packaging technologies. The package realisation resulted in single and multi-die packages and provided a reliable and cost-effective solution compared in compared to conventional IC packages. The HERMES project was direct application- related and resulted in multiple levels of embed- ded chips, multiple lamination cycles, embed- ding of ultra-thin chips in flex, power modules and radar applications of 77 GHz. The products that have been developed un- der this project are not easy to copy. Special investments are needed to perform the required technologies and co-operation between PCB fabricator, assemblers and chip fabricators are needed to get the required unpackaged com- ponents. At present, most of these products are manufactured in Europe. Experience has proved that the European electronics industry very much depends on in- novation. Based on such by the electronics in- dustry, the Active Multi Layer (AML ® ) technol- ogy was developed by Hofmann Leiterplatten GmbH in Germany. The goal was to combine the benefits of the standard copper clad lami- nate, prepregs and epoxy resin as well as stan- dard placement and soldering technology into one embedded device with an advanced thermal conductivity of these materials in one package. The key to success is based on using standard materials (Figure 9), assembly attachment and soldering processes in conjunction with some modified standard manufacturing PCB process- es. Key in the success of this technology is the control of the design, the PCB fabrication and assembly processes. Today, standard PCB fabri- cators do not have these capabilities. However, DEvICE EMBEDDING IN PCBS: EvOLUTION OR REvOLUTION? continues Figure 6: the success of the herMeS project was based on the involvement of the total supply chain for electronic devices. representatives from silicon wafer fabrication, materials and process suppliers, to packaging to end-users with specific applications proved the need for this form of package and product [8] .