Items Tagged with 'Dielectric Constant'

This article series by Keshav Amla of Avishtech provides an introduction and overview of the dielectric materials upon which a PCB is built, focusing on what comprises these materials; the data available from the materials vendors; how the key material attributes drive performance; and how these ideas can be leveraged in the development of new product implementations.

The first goal in any high-speed board stack up design is to engineer interconnects with a target impedance, and the first step in this process is to use a 2D field solver to explore design space with a virtual prototype. Just how well can a field solver predict the impedance of traces on a real board? This article aims to answer this question.

The dielectric constant, Dk, of a laminate will affect the characteristic impedance of a transmission line and its time delay. If you hope to achieve a specific target characteristic impedance on the first pass, it is essential to know the Dk of each laminate layer.  Here is a quick, simple way of measuring it.