The Many Benefits of Additive Process in PCB Manufacturing

Zachariah Peterson
|  Created: April 1, 2022  |  Updated: March 5, 2024
The Many Benefits of Additive Process in PCB Manufacturing

In this episode, we will continue with the topic of Design WITH Manufacturing, and joining us is Mike Vinson, the Chief Operating Officer at Averatek. Mike will help us understand Averatek’s advanced PCB manufacturing processes, including the technology and chemistry behind A-SAP and 3D printing.

Listen to the Podcast:

Download this episode (right click and save)

Watch the video:

Show Highlights:

  • Mike Vinson's background
  • Mike explains what is an Additive Process
    • A-SAP–a semi-additive process used to make very fine features for high definition, and high density interconnects on print circuit boards.
    • The ability to add metalization other than copper, such as platinum, gold, palladium
    • 3D printing–a fully-additive process where all of the material is just added on, and nothing is subtracted away
  • Averatek’s business’s scope
    • Licensing the technology and selling the chemistry
    • The current clientele is North America
    • Efficient and secure prototyping
  • Is the 3D surface solderable?
  • MIDs or molded interconnect devices, are cool, but are they affordable?
  • Tara Dunn, Averatek’s VP in Marketing, is the primary point of contact for licensing
  • What do the economic look like for A-SAP technology? Will it be accessible, and cost-effective?
  • Mikes talks about the scalability of materials set in A-SAP technology
  • How can PCB designers take advantage of the A-SAP capabilities so that they can create more compact, smaller features, more advanced products?
  • How about a transparent substrate? Averatek has worked with transparent polyimides and has done some other transparent substrates
  • What are the things to look forward to in additive processes and the additive manufacturing realm in general?

Links and Resources:

Connect with Mike Vinson on LinkedIn
Visit Averatek's website
Check out Tara Dunn’s Articles on Altium Resource Hub
Watch Previous Episode Mike Vinson:
    Sub-25 Micron Traces with Averatek ASAP Technology
    Semi-Additive Process Technology at Averatek
Connect with Zack on LinkedIn
 

Full OnTrack Podcast Library
Altium Website
Download your Altium Designer Free Trial
Learn More about Altium enterprise solutions
Altium 365: Where the World Designs Electronics

 

Claim the special offer for Podcast listeners only

Zach Peterson:
As I recall from readings from stuff from Tara, it's all sub-one mill that you can get to with the A-SAP process. Is that correct?

Mike Vinson:
Quite easily, actually. With a lot of the technology that's installed in the shops in North America today, we can get to sub-one mill lines and spaces. The technology itself can go far much smaller, but it requires far more sophisticated equipment to do there.

Zach Peterson:
Hello everyone. And welcome to the Altium OnTrack podcast. I am your host, Zach Peterson, and I am sitting down today with Mike Vinson from Averatek. Mike Vinson and all of the folks at Averatek are highly knowledgeable in additive processes for PCB manufacturing. And that's exactly what we're going to be talking about today.

Zach Peterson:
I think it's going to be a very illuminating conversation, especially as we continue the theme of designing with manufacturing, not just designing for manufacturing. Mike, thank you so much for joining us.

Mike Vinson:
Thank you for having me, Zach. And I look forward to talking about what we're doing at Averatek and how it fits in with the design community at large.

Zach Peterson:
Yeah, absolutely. And maybe before you get started or we jump right into the head of the process discussion, maybe you can tell the audience a bit more about your background and how you got started in PCB manufacturing.

Mike Vinson:
My background is in interconnect. It started at Texas Instruments long, long time ago. Back in 1984. And from there, we went to different types of die interconnect schemes. Then from there, to surface mount. And then from surface mount into PC boards.

Mike Vinson:
Averatek was started about 15 years ago, to emphasize a new technology that was created at SRA International. And that technology is something that we've been using ever since. And we'll go into that in a little bit.

Zach Peterson:
So Mike, I think those who pay attention to PCB manufacturing matters within the industry probably best know Averatek for its additive processing. And so maybe you could describe that a little bit for those in the audience who are not familiar with Averateks process, and then additive processes in general. Because I think when people think additive PCB manufacturing processes, they're probably thinking 3D printers.

Mike Vinson:
Yes. So we're doing a lot of things in the additive world right now, along with sem-additive processes. I think one of our more popular processes is A-SAP, which is a semi-additive process that we use to make very fine features for high definition and high density interconnects on print circuit boards.

Mike Vinson:
But we're also doing fully-additive processes to add metalizations to 3D objects, to make patterns as well as circuits for things like patch antennas and different features on 3D printed objects. So I happen to have one here that I can share with you a little bit. I think you can see that.

Mike Vinson:
And that's a cone where we've patterned on the copper. We have the ability to put that all around the cone in 3D, we can put patches on there. So we have a variety of ways to add the metalization, and not just copper.

Mike Vinson:
There's a lot of interesting other metals, like platinum, gold, palladium. So that they're the more noble metals. And that's of a lot of interest to people who are trying to build these kind of radiation domes or cones with antennas on them.

Zach Peterson:
That's extremely interesting. And in this context, when you say additive or fully-additive, you really mean the substrate as well as all of the conductors. Not just-

Mike Vinson:
Yeah. In this case, the 3D printing is done before we get the part. And that 3D printing is fully-additive where all of the material is just added on and nothing's really subtracted away. And then when we get it, we put a pattern on there that's all additive. So we're just adding the copper onto the surface and we're not etching it away to make the pattern.

Zach Peterson:
So it's basically a chemical deposition process on a 3D printed part. The 3D printed process really doesn't matter. It could be FDM, could be stereo-lithography, whatever it may be.

Mike Vinson:
The 3D printing process really, we're pretty agnostic to that. The materials of course, we're somewhat dependent upon, but not totally. We haven't run into many 3D printed materials that we couldn't do well on.

Zach Peterson:
You mean that you can't deposit on without strong adherence?

Mike Vinson:
Correct.

Zach Peterson:
I see, okay. That's really interesting. And I think it's one of the things that hopefully will drive more adoption of 3D printing within the actual electronics design process beyond just the enclosure. I mean, I know a lot of companies and clients, they'll keep a 3D printer in the office just so that they can 3D print their enclosures when they're doing prototypes and things like this. But no one ever talks about doing it at the board level, either because it's too expensive or because they want to go fully-additive and they can't, nothing's compatible.

Mike Vinson:
Right. And it is difficult, you have to think through the issues. But we're working with some of the 3D printer companies to make sure that what they're thinking about in terms of how they print the device or construct it, and what we're doing afterwards so that when we actually add the metalization on the surface, we can have a complete product that meets everybody's needs.

Zach Peterson:
As far as the markets that you're targeting, I mean you had mentioned RF antennas, that could pretty much cover any application. But I would imagine unique form factor, wireless equipments, maybe mill arrow. Some unique stuff like that.

Mike Vinson:
Yeah, there's a lot of things that are going on, especially with the new 5G protocol for cellular towers and such, that require very specific and very precise patterns put on surfaces. And we think that these techniques that we're using can be used to make higher gain antennas and lower power consumption electronics for these applications.

Zach Peterson:
I think within 5G, this gives you an opportunity to maybe hide smaller form factor repeater stations in plain site, almost. That's one of the things, as the 5G frequencies get higher and higher, you need to have more of these micro stations essentially spread all over the place.

Zach Peterson:
And I think if you've never thought about it in this way, in terms of an additively manufactured product, you start to wonder, "Well, what does that look like? Do we have these little, mini cell towers on every block?" And so the form factor is really, I think, significant there.

Mike Vinson:
And we're just beginning to scratch the surface on what we're capable of there.

Zach Peterson:
That's really interesting. And then I wonder what has to happen in the CAD tools to be able to do this. For those in the audience who have some experience with MCAD tools, I know that it's possible to basically convert files into STL files and put them onto a 3D printer.

Zach Peterson:
This seems like a little bit of a different beast because you're not generating printing instructions. What are you generating from design files in order to actually use your process and then get that onto a 3D object?

Mike Vinson:
So we're doing two things. We're generating a profile of the 3D object, so that as we go through the process, we know where the surface is that we're depositing on. We deposit in very small areas actually, and process those in patterns. So we need that to be in focus when we do, and we need to know of the contours that we're dealing with.

Mike Vinson:
After that, it's pretty much a bath process, so we're going to code everything that we touch. But there are some inputs of step files to be able to program in that profile. And then there's also the pattern and that we project onto that curve surface that we program into the machines. But after that, it's simply a matter of pushing the button.

Zach Peterson:
Entirely past the process. Essentially just deposition.

Mike Vinson:
It's pretty much just deposition, but it is very selective deposition.

Zach Peterson:
Sure, that makes sense. So you have to coat with a seed layer, essentially?

Mike Vinson:
Yes, we coat with the seed layer and then we cure that seed layer and leave behind a seed of palladium. And then that seed of palladium is used to then plate the electro-less metals on top of it.

Zach Peterson:
Got it, okay. Fun. Sounds pretty standard too. I think anyone that's dealt with electrochemical deposition processes could wrap their head around it. And it doesn't sound like it would be too much of a lift to incorporate this into other standard processing steps or possibly into a facility without much effort.

Mike Vinson:
Yeah. It should be very straightforward. And we're talking with a couple of different customers who are looking to implement this right off-the-bat. And we find that they have basically all the tools that they need to do this upfront, outside of the Averatek chemistry. And a lot of those are implementing the Averatek chemistry for other projects as well. So they're pretty much good to go as soon as we get the process transferred to them.

Zach Peterson:
Sure. So companies are licensing the chemistry from you. That's your IP, and then they're licensing-

Mike Vinson:
They're licensing the technology, yes. They're licensing the technology from us and they're buying the chemistry.

Zach Peterson:
Sure, it makes sense. So are you focusing just in North America, are you focusing worldwide? I mean, what's the geography here?

Mike Vinson:
So we have some small inquiries worldwide. Primarily, our focus is North America right now. We're dealing with a lot of companies who need to keep their business in North America for security reasons or other reasons. And they're very interested in having this capability on-shore.

Mike Vinson:
So we're working closely with them. It's also easier for us to do these first implementations on-shore. And then after that, we'll look at what's actually possible for us to do in the international market.

Zach Peterson:
Sure. I could imagine with maybe export controlled products or possibly just products that are still in development and not ready for broad release, it might make sense to use this process at a prototype manufacturer to try and finish your development, perfect your form factor, make sure that you get a design that works best.

Mike Vinson:
Yeah. For prototyping things like 3D printing, work very, very well. And the ability then to put these circuits on so easily also will be a real asset. So you can turn prototypes very quickly with this capability.

Zach Peterson:
And then if you were, and we haven't mentioned this part yet but if you deposit circuits on maybe, not a curved surface but maybe a 3D surface and it has flat surfaces, can you actually assemble on it? Is it solderable?

Mike Vinson:
Yes. We've done soldering tests where we have taken, not necessarily 3D printed parts, but molded parts that are 3D objects and put the circuitry on them. And then did soldering test, the reflow test, pull tests on the soldered parts. Found very good results on those. Again, it will depend on your substrate. But the metal is copper in most cases, and that is always very solderable.

Zach Peterson:
I could imagine having maybe a square and then mounting all of your, or a cube I should say, not a square... have a cube and then mounting all your components on the sides. That'd be interesting.

Zach Peterson:
MIDs, or molded interconnect devices, the last time I had discussed these with anybody was probably 2018. And this was before companies like yourself were really coming out and pushing these types of processes, at least to my knowledge.

Zach Peterson:
And it was always viewed as something that was really cool but too expensive, or it looks nice but not really commercially viable, "We're sticking with planer." And you guys seem to have really helped people change their perspective on what you can do with assembly, especially in 3D.

Mike Vinson:
We're going for cool, and not that expensive.

Zach Peterson:
Everybody likes that, right?

Mike Vinson:
Yeah.

Zach Peterson:
So you guys were recently at IPC APEX as well. And actually, one of the authors on the Altium blog, Tara Dunn, she's our resident of flex-pert. She has also been out on the road with you guys talking quite a bit about A-SAP and flex in general. And we'll actually link to some of her stuff in the show notes, but maybe you can tell me a bit more about what's in your IPC paper.

Mike Vinson:
So first full disclosure, Tara is our VP of marketing-

Zach Peterson:
Yes, of course.

Mike Vinson:
... here, at Averatek. And in the IPC paper, we talked a lot about what it would take for a designer to use a tool like the Altium tool. To take a current design that maybe is four layers or six layers, and then convert that to a design that's two or four layers by using finer and finer features, fewer vias.

Mike Vinson:
And then through the fewer lamination cycles of the fewer layers, you can also get higher reliability. And the paper addressed those issues, looked at the performance that you would get from the new product as well as the old product. And then talked about how some of the modeling techniques that are being used to be able to do that to enable a designer to take advantage of the feature sizes we can deliver with the A-SAP technology.

Zach Peterson:
One thing that's a double edged sword of CAD tools is they allow you to do just about anything within whatever is defined as a limit in the software, but may not necessarily be manufactureable. And so you guys are really pushing the limit, it sounds like, of what you can do inside of a tool like Altium or another CAD program.

Mike Vinson:
Yeah. Well actually we're helping them exercise their limits, I think. It's more of an enabling technology and it allows a lot of the things that designers have been envisioning for a long time to be realized. And also, since we're implementing it first in North America, a lot of these designers who are local here can now work with local shops to be able to take their design to reality.

Zach Peterson:
Yeah. And I think it's fitting in nicely with the on-shoring narrative that's going on, especially around electronics manufacturing and trying to keep some of those advanced designs here in the US. Because I know that IP protection, it's something that we've all complained about for the last 10 years or so. And it's only now, after a worldwide pandemic that we all start to really care about it when we can't get the newest iPhone on time.

Mike Vinson:
Something like that, yes.

Zach Peterson:
Something like that. Yeah, exactly. I found that interesting because we were actually talking with the CEO of Elmatica on a previous episode of the podcast. And his entire discussion was about manufacturing capabilities in the US, and making sure we can keep some of that manufacturing for those mission-critical components and products in the US.

Zach Peterson:
And I'm hoping that bringing these processes back into the US and making them mainstream allows us to do that, but do it cost effectively. Because at the end of the day, the economics dominate. So I mean with the economics in mind, what do the economic look? Are the cost constraints too much of a challenge for everybody? Is this something that's going to be more accessible? Is this just going to take more time to really get there and be something that is cost competitive?

Zach Peterson:
Or is it going to just be one of those things where the A-SAP process is great, but I can only afford to use it on something where, let's say the DOD is throwing money at me and I absolutely must keep everything on shore due to export control restrictions?

Mike Vinson:
The A-SAP technology has shown itself to shine where there are shops that have installed capabilities, such as those shops in North America, that can install the A-SAP process for a very low cost, bring it up and running and then be able to produce parts.

Mike Vinson:
And as I mentioned earlier, if the designer can redesign a six layer board that's being built in that shop to a four layer board, they're going to see a cost reduction in that component. So not only are we going to be performance competitive, we're also going to be cost competitive. And as things shrink and we have fewer components to deal with in the manufacturing, the reliability in yield will also increase.

Zach Peterson:
Sure. So the cost is really being cut-driven in two directions. The manufacturer who has to actually implement the A-SAP technology. But then you're mention that it actually can save the designer money, or they can go to a more advanced product without increasing their cost.

Mike Vinson:
Right. And a lot of trouble that we're seeing these days that the designers are facing is that they have a shrink in the BGA ball pad pitch. And those shrinking pads with shrinking ball pitches are creating a lot of grief to be able to interconnect to those pads.

Mike Vinson:
But with finer and finer traces, we'd find that we can get more and more signals through those shrunk pad spacings and then create a solution on fewer layers than you would be able to with the cruder technologies. Or you can look at it as being able to just shrink the BGA, use the more modern package that's successful and then create a solution out of that.

Zach Peterson:
Yeah, that's interesting. And I know with BGA assembly, there can be many chances for defects especially when you get to that smaller pitch size. So that's great that you guys have a process that can really help address that and hopefully increase reliability and yield.

Zach Peterson:
One thing that I was actually wondering as we're talking about this, there's one 3D printing company that I've worked with in the past. And their value proposition is their broad material set. And they actually market themselves into having some of the most advanced low-loss materials.

Zach Peterson:
And so of course that brings up the question of, what plans are there to expand the material set? Can this work with some alternative material sets? And is that really scalable or is it just the A-SAP specific chemistry?

Mike Vinson:
No, it is scalable. We've been working with a lot of different substrate suppliers, for instance, in the printer circuit board area. Working with companies who are producing substrates that have sometimes been thought of difficult to work with or difficult to adhere to.

Mike Vinson:
And we're finding very good results with a lot of their products. So we're creating a very large portfolio of substrate materials that we can work with. And from those, we think that we can derive a very broad area of applications that we can attack.

Mike Vinson:
Maybe not everything in terms of substrate materials. But probably almost everything in terms of applications because we can find parallels there between the different dielectric constants and different CTE's of the materials that will work well.

Zach Peterson:
Yeah, because I'm wondering if you have material from vendor A, material set chemistry from Averatek and then a machine from a third party. And the third party could essentially implement a process that brings it all together and really lets the designer have some more flexibility on what material sets they're going to use to try and get the best results for their product. So super low-loss dielectric inks, plus then an additive process to deposit conductors. I mean, do you see that happening? Is that on your roadmap?

Mike Vinson:
We're testing all the time. We see a lot of low-loss materials that they're building products using our technology, the A-SAP technology, the LMI ink material that we sell. Along with these new low-loss substrate materials that they are getting quite high performance out of.

Mike Vinson:
So everything from making these cones I was showing you, which is a very advanced material set, low-loss, up to a printed circuit board that's extremely thin and using very fine features on it. We're finding a broad acceptance and actually a lot of traction in the market right now.

Zach Peterson:
So how does a designer take advantage of this? And what I mean by that is, what manufacturers could they talk to to start implementing this? And I'm not asking you to endorse anybody or anything like that. But how do they find out what they need to do to go and take advantage of these capabilities so that they can create more compact, smaller features, more advanced products?

Mike Vinson:
Well, the first thing to do is contact Tara Dunn. Who, as I mentioned, is our VP of marketing. And she can put them in direct contact with the best licensee that we have. We have three commercial licensees in North America. We have several that are more captive in the middle of our space area.

Mike Vinson:
But the commercial ones, she can put them in touch with the best ones for their particular product, their particular need to match what their design criteria are to the capabilities of those licensees. And they can begin implementing almost immediately.

Zach Peterson:
Okay. So they can then begin that discussion with the manufacturer and get started.

Mike Vinson:
Yes.

Zach Peterson:
One thing that just came to mind as we're talking about all this is those feature sizes that you're getting down to. As I recall from readings from stuff from Tara, it's all sub-one mill that you can get to with the A-SAP process. Is that correct?

Mike Vinson:
Quite easily, actually. With a lot of the technology that's installed in the shops in North America today, we can get to sub-one mill lines and spaces. The technology itself can go far much smaller, but it requires far more sophisticated equipment to do that.

Zach Peterson:
Sure, that's generally the case with smaller feature sizes. But what about clearances? I mean, how dense can you really get? Because it's one thing to put a sub-one mill trace, but how close together can I put a bank of sub-one mill traces?

Mike Vinson:
We've got some pictures of things that we've done in the 17 micron wide trace and the, I'm sorry... 11 micron wide trace, 17 micron space. Sub-30 micron pitch with very good aspect, high aspect ratios on those traces. There are a lot of details about where you can go with this.

Mike Vinson:
But the spaces can be made actually as narrow as the... because this is a semi-additive process, the photo resist needs to form the spaces. So if you can resolve that photo resist down to a small enough feature, you can make an extremely fine space in between.

Mike Vinson:
Because in the semi-additive process we remove the base material underneath. And the base material in the A-SAP process is so extremely thin, that even though the traces are very close together, we can etch that out easily.

Zach Peterson:
Okay, I see. That makes sense. So like with the stereo-lithography process or maybe a DLP process. It's really just whatever the smallest feature size you can project through your lithography process, that's what's going to get you the finer features.

Mike Vinson:
Right. And most stereo-lithography processes today don't really focus on fine features. They're focusing on more of an area and making those areas smoother and more compatible. So that when we get to actually making the circuitry, that's when we have to implement the finer features. And those are also something that we usually do with the finest features we give the semi-additive process, but other features we can do with the additive process that are quite precise.

Zach Peterson:
Sure, that makes perfect sense. And then one interesting thing that just came to mind, with what you just showed earlier in the printing on the cone. That's printing on the outside area of a surface. Essentially, if you wanted, you could do it on a cube and so you're coming up to outside corners. What about inside corners on a surface? So I have a surface and then it curves up and I want to print like this, can you do that with the A-SAP process?

Mike Vinson:
With the A-SAP process, we can get into some very, very fine areas. The LMI can penetrate into very small areas. We get down into the 10 or 15 nanometer particles or opening size with the catalyst. And so we can metalize in some very, very small areas. And we've done some inside corner plating and other things with the A-SAP. The challenge comes with 3D objects, being able to pattern them. Once we've got them patterned, then we can build the metalization up without any problem.

Zach Peterson:
And one other question that came to mind also, can you do anything on transparent substrates? So can you do this on glass?

Mike Vinson:
Well, we're working now with some transparent polyimides for instance, and we've done some other transparent substrates. Glass is a little more problematic. It requires a lot more surface finishing and that changes the refractive index of the surface sometime.

Mike Vinson:
So there are some considerations to be made with transparent substrates and how we change the effects of the transparency. If you put a lot of very fine features on something that looks clearer, you can actually look through it, but it will also distort the optical properties of the material. So all those things considered, yes, we can deposit on clearer substrates. And yes, there are some applications that can take advantage of that.

Zach Peterson:
Because I was just thinking, if you have the transparent substrate, you have a unique material set, then you could possibly also do transparent conductors on that substrate. And then you could have transparent RF circuits on a substrate. So now we're thinking your radar system for your car basically being built into the windshield.

Mike Vinson:
Yeah. And the thing about our technology is we make very dense and very conductive metals on these surfaces. But they are metals, they have a very high optical density too. They're not like some of the other transparent conductors like ITO.

Mike Vinson:
So with these very dense things, if we put them onto the surface, you can actually see through them. They're optically, somewhat transparent. But they also tend to distort the image some. And so in a lot of applications, it's like the heater elements on your rear window, you can actually see those if you look close enough, but at a distance they seem to disappear. And those are the kinds of things we can do with this technology.

Zach Peterson:
Yeah. So you would want to do it in a way that doesn't prevent or create a distraction for somebody like your driver.

Mike Vinson:
Right. But if you wanted to put, say for instance, a very thin, fine feature in a coil all the way around a window or an opening, that would be a very high gain antenna for certain frequencies. Yes, that's doable.

Zach Peterson:
Okay. That's interesting. That's where you really start to take the printing of electronics, I think to a new level that most people don't consider when you start doing things transparent. So that's very cool. I bring it up just because in my past life doing zinc oxide, we always tried to get to as transparent as possible, deposition on glasses. So you guys are totally beating us in what we did.

Mike Vinson:
Well, this technology gives you a much more conductive line for the same width, but it also gives you that very high optical density in that very small area.

Zach Peterson:
Yeah, absolutely. So we're getting up there on time, but I definitely want to make sure to ask you this, what is the future of the A-SAP process or your additive processes, or even just the additive manufacturing realm in general? What do you see coming down the pipeline in the next few years?

Mike Vinson:
So right now we're working on some technologies that will allow us to embed die in printed circuit boards or some very small modules perhaps, and that embedding can be done with extremely fine features. And all of the routing issues that we were talking about that get solved as the feature size goes down, we can get even smaller features on the die and then still route around those with this new technology.

Mike Vinson:
And it's an additive technology. And we're working and on that with a number of companies right now to develop it out. That's one of the big things that's coming down the pipe with this technology. The other one is this additive technology that you've been looking at, and we're looking at different ways to incorporate that into some high performance products, as well as things that have high reliability requirements like automotive.

Zach Peterson:
And then the other area I think that often gets overlooked a little bit by the semiconductor side, but definitely by the PCB folks is interposers. Do you guys have plans to apply this to interposers?

Mike Vinson:
Yes. And we also have a technique we look at and call an insito-interposer. Where you can take our technologies and mix them and match them so that if one has an extremely fine feature size, you can use that in one layer and then you can put another with a more coarse feature size on another layer.

Mike Vinson:
And you can go all the way up to the current technology for, say a power and ground layer and make it with that technology. So it's the ability to mix and match these different technologies to give you the kind of distribution you need within your solution set. And those interposers can be built either as smaller interposers that are free-standing, or they can be incorporated into the design of a larger printed circuit board.

Zach Peterson:
That's so interesting. I mean, this is excellent stuff. Thank you so much for being with us today, Mike. I'm definitely going to put a link to the recent IPC APEX paper into the show notes. Also, you had mentioned contacting Tara Dunn. I think what we'll do is we'll put a link to her LinkedIn profile in the show notes, if you're okay with that.

Mike Vinson:
That'll be great. Yeah.

Zach Peterson:
Yeah, absolutely. And I would encourage anyone who is listening and wants to learn more about this process, we've got some links on the blog that we will include in the show notes. And then also, if you're interested in applying this for your own circuit boards to please reach out to Tara Dunn over at Averatek.

Zach Peterson:
Thank you again, Mike. We've been talking with Mike Vinson from Averatek. And I think this has been a really interesting discussion on an area that I think is very cool and I hope more people are going to become aware of in the coming years. Thank you, again.

Mike Vinson:
Thank you, Zach. Great talking to you today.

Zach Peterson:
Thank you. And everybody out there listening, please go ahead and hit the subscribe button on YouTube. You're going to see a lot more interesting discussions with technology leaders talking with us on the Altium podcast. Everybody out there, don't stop learning and stay on track.

About Author

About Author

Zachariah Peterson has an extensive technical background in academia and industry. He currently provides research, design, and marketing services to companies in the electronics industry. Prior to working in the PCB industry, he taught at Portland State University and conducted research on random laser theory, materials, and stability. His background in scientific research spans topics in nanoparticle lasers, electronic and optoelectronic semiconductor devices, environmental sensors, and stochastics. His work has been published in over a dozen peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and he has written 2500+ technical articles on PCB design for a number of companies. He is a member of IEEE Photonics Society, IEEE Electronics Packaging Society, American Physical Society, and the Printed Circuit Engineering Association (PCEA). He previously served as a voting member on the INCITS Quantum Computing Technical Advisory Committee working on technical standards for quantum electronics, and he currently serves on the IEEE P3186 Working Group focused on Port Interface Representing Photonic Signals Using SPICE-class Circuit Simulators.

Related Resources

Back to Home
Thank you, you are now subscribed to updates.