Vishay High Energy Transfer with Film Copper Plating

Challenge

In order to achieve this, heat would need to be transferred from one area of the board to a heatsink while still having standard RF lines with a TiW/Au metal stack.

Solution

A custom thin film solution was created to deposit a metal stack onto the PCB, incorporating the necessary thermal and power management characteristics and operational performance in space-level applications. The first metal layer is chrome, providing the adhesion for the important second layer of copper.

Copper has excellent heat transfer properties and is ideal for controlling temperature in high-efficiency applications. The nickel layer on top of the copper provides a solder barrier to compensate for any issues caused by the soldering process during manufacturing and assembly.

The final gold layer enables the wire bonding of components and completes the metal stack, and because gold is a noble metal, it is not susceptible to oxidation, making it suitable for space-level applications.

Benefit

The metal stack applied and incorporated into the existing design provided the energy transfer required to achieve optimal circuit performance in a space environment. The specified copper layer thickness also provided a standard for use in future designs with similar requirements.