Highlights

The author would like to thank Ray Ellet of Megatool for his help and assistance during the crucial drilling tests. He also thanks several colleagues at The Dow Chemical Company namely, Katie Lehnert, Robert Hearn, William Mercer, Gary Gantt, Judy Tan, Gabrielle Badini and Ha Pham for their help and suggestions.

Nikhil Verghese
PCB drillability: a material science approach to resin development

Keywords

Epoxy resins, Printed-circuit boards, Laminates

Abstract

In the manufacturing process for making printed circuit boards (PCB) it is necessary to drill holes in the base copper clad laminate. This is a crucial step in the case of multi-layer boards where the holes must be plated with copper to complete the electrical connection between the layers. Drilling is an expensive process as it requires the use of extremely sophisticated equipment. Most often this resides with a handful of companies; namely board shops and drill bit manufacturers. In recent years, with the evolution of high performance resins such as high glass transition ( T _g) and decomposition temperature ( T _d) as well as low dielectric constant ( D _k) and the continued embracement of the use of phenolic cured resins compared to dicyandiamide (DICY), issues around drillability have increased. As a part of our efforts we compared the mechanical and thermo-mechanical properties of three resins. Actual drilling studies were performed on...