Items Tagged with 'Copper'

The roughness of copper foils has a detrimental effect on signal loss in PCBs. Therefore, reducing roughness is crucial in minimizing signal loss. Nevertheless, roughness is essential to ensure a good adherence between the prepreg and the copper foil. A compromise must be found between adherence and power integrity. This paper presents a novel approach to evaluate signal loss without assuming any specific roughness shape.    

In this article, Bert Simonovich explores how to avoid “garbage in, garbage out” with field solvers by building an understanding of the nuances of PCB fabrication processes, the interpretation manufacturers’ data sheets, and the tool’s user interface.

About 150 years ago the first stable transatlantic cable was laid and messages were sent between Ireland and Newfound­land over copper. The data rate on this cable was not even 1 bit/sec, it was 0.1 bit/sec. Concerns over the cable reliabil­ity and the slow data rate led some to believe copper was doomed as a communication media for these long cables.

Designing the right PCB stackup can make or break product performance. If the product has circuitry that is impedance and transmission loss sensitive, then paying attention to conductor surface roughness is paramount. Sometimes, however, the roughness of adjacent reference plane(s) is overlooked. If the adjacent high-speed signal layer uses smoother copper than one or both reference planes, a higher insertion loss than expected for that layer will occur and possibly cause a product to fail compliance. So, how is this determined before finalizing the stackup? Read on to find out.

In lieu of the given applications and industry efforts, many enterprises and industries are now viewing silicon photonics as an inevitable component for computers and monitoring devices. As the technology is touted to mature in the coming years, chances are that supercomputers would likely reach the exascale speed around human brain’s processing power at the neural level.

With more than three times more webinars offered in our Covid-19 era, we have more opportunities to accelerate up the learning curve or waste a lot of time. I sacrificed hours of my time watching dozens of webinars to identify these three princes. Check them out. They are well worth your time.

Copper loss is one ingredient in interconnect loss. Surface texture or roughness has long been recognized as adding an excess loss over smooth copper. With the SI-VSP (very smooth profile) copper foils recently introduced by Mitsui Mining&Smelting Co. Ltd. (Mitsui Kinzoku), we may have reached the limits.

What are the greatest technical challenges facing connector designs for future high-speed deployments?Jairo Guerrero of Molex delves into the technical challenges for today’s connectors, the influence of applications such as automotive and data/telecom, and he gives an intriguing glimpse into the product development process at Molex.