THICK FILM HYBRID CIRCUITS

1. Thick film hybrid technology
2. Laser cutting of alumina substrates

Thick film hybrid technology is based on the application of specially formulated pastes using the screen printing technology onto the alumina ceramic substrate. This way it is possible to create conductive and dielectric layers, conductive interconnects and printed resistors of various shapes. This technology allows gluing and bonding of non-encapsulated semiconductor chips onto the ceramic substrate and at the same time soldering of components for surface mount assembly.

The major advantages of the thick film hybrid technology are as follows:

• high level of integration at low costs for development of a new circuit and its production

• high thermal conductivity of the substrate

• possibility to create 4 conductive layers with low production costs

• possibility to set up arbitrary values of resistors with the accuracy of up to 0.2%

• automatic active resistor trimming (during measurement of hybrid circuit parameters)

• various ways of encapsulation

• utilization of SIL and DIL outlets

Thick film hybrid technology is suitable for production of custom circuits. HC electronic uses this technology for example for production of low frequency active filters, scoring electronics of sensors, passive resistor networks and crystal oscillators.

The significance of the thick film hybrid technology has been on the rise recently primarily thanks to the new technology MCM-C (Multichip Modules), which uses also printing of conductive layers on the ceramic for interconnection of semiconductor chips.