Heraeus Electronics, a leading provider of materials solutions for the semiconductor and electronic packaging industries, today announced its new SD1020 dielectric thick film paste, which represents a breakthrough in insulative technology for circuits and heaters on stainless steel used in automotive, industrial and consumer-product applications. The paste combines design flexibility with well-known advantages for thick film heater technology, including high reliability, fast cycle times, high power densities and precise heating.
One of the biggest challenges with existing paste technology has been the inability to solve substrate issues, which results in poor performance of the printed circuit on that bowed substrate. The bowing leads not only to flatness and printing problems, but also causes stresses within the fired film system that are manifested in field failures undetectable to outgoing quality checks.
The new SD1020 paste from Heraeus Electronics provides an effective solution for product engineers faced with these difficulties. SD1020 provides a variety of performance-enhancing benefits, including:
- Improved production yields that will deliver cost improvements
- Optimized paste consumption, which will help decrease paste / BOM costs
- Expanded capabilities to markets that were previously unattainable to customers. The new paste can enable them to develop and produce heaters and circuits for larger substrates
Historically, two types of stainless steel were used by industry for thick film heaters - 300 and 400 series - and each required different insulative/dielectric pastes in order to process on each type because of thermal expansion mismatches. Heraeus SD1020 paste is versatile and can be used on these stainless steel types with excellent, low-bowing properties. Its well-matched thermal coefficient of expansion (TCE) and insulative properties makes it ideal as an ultra-low bowing dielectric for heater on steel applications, enabling extended substrate sizes, improved production yields and paste consumption for overall BOM cost advantages.