As a manufacturer of custom ceramics for thin-film circuit development for more than four decades, we are highly familiar with all the complexities involved in working with these materials to build a variety of circuits. Over the years, we’ve received quite a few questions about this technology, so we put together this Q&A to help answer some of the common questions you may have about thin film circuits.
A: Thin film circuit technology is used to fabricate electronic components for various applications, including RF devices. Developing thin film involves creating a layer of material with thickness ranging from fractions of a nanometer to several micrometers on a ceramic substrate. This technology offers significant performance advantages over other manufacturing methods, especially for high-frequency microwave circuits.
A: Thin film offers several advantages for RF devices including the following:
A: To ensure the reliability and performance of your thin film circuits, you need a manufacturer who has both a thorough understanding of the technology and experience producing custom thin film circuits. You should also ensure the manufacturer has build-to-print capabilities. This indicates the manufacturer can adapt to your needs and requirements and either work closely with your engineers to design thin film circuits or manufacture the circuits based on your drawing specifications. Additionally, a reputable manufacturer should offer testing and quality assurance services from prototype to production to ensure the final product meets your standards.
A: Filters designed using thin film have several key advantages including:
A: The short answer is, yes, you can make interposers and IPDs with thin-film technology. Let’s explore this a little more.
When constructing interposers with thin film, you can take advantage of the technology’s benefits to experience reduced signal loss and more opportunities to reduce component size. Thin film also enables advanced forms of packaging, including heterogeneous integration. With a low dielectric constant and low loss tangent, which minimizes signal loss at high frequencies, thin film ceramic interposers are well-suited for RF and microwave applications.
IPDs, which are devices that combine circuit building blocks into a single device, manufactured using thin film technology offer a variety of benefits, especially for assembling the end device. For example, you can build an IPD with thin film to safely place several connections close together. With this approach, there is just one component to place in the end device instead of dozens of capacitors and resistors, saving a lot of space in the device and reducing assembly time. However, it is important to note that if improperly assembled, these condensed components can create performance issues.
At Knowles Precision Devices, we are highly experienced in putting thin film down using a proven process that, simply put, makes things work the way they are supposed to. And since we specialize in working with military and aerospace organizations, we are incredibly familiar with making components that are compact and reliable, even in incredibly harsh environments.
Download our comprehensive Build-to-Print Ebook to learn more about the technical aspects of our thin film offerings, or contact us today to discuss your thin film circuit needs.