Judy Warner (00:01) Hi Alex, thanks so much for joining today on the podcast. I look forward to catching up on everything that's going on in the laminate market. I'm glad you could join today. Alex (00:10) Thank you so much Judy. Judy Warner (00:13) Well, it's sort of, it's not a new topic, but it's something that you particularly know a lot about. And so I wanted to delve into the ongoing blurry lines really of high-speed digital and RF and how those worlds are converging and how specifically design engineers need to look at their laminates these days. But before we do that, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got so wise about this subject. Alex (00:42) Not sure if I got so wise, but at least I'm in a game since probably three decades now. I'm an electrical engineer by training. I worked two decades in manufacturing printed circuit boards, mainly in the HSD area. And then I moved on to base materials. And the first thing was I was put in charge of five microwave materials. So had to... Judy Warner (00:46) You Alex (01:11) get used to that a little bit and found a lot of differences in how the two worlds were working. And now back to what you just said is the funny thing is now things come together again, but used to be very distinct, different areas are looking more and more like a similar thing. And if you think about what the electrical fields, the signals are really seeing, there's no different really between an RF signal and an HSD signal. it's not that surprising, but back to the point in HSD, we were typically talking about highly occuring boards. We were talking about impedances and propagation delay and insertion loss. And probably in differential pairs, we were talking about five-way effect. In RF microwave on the other hand side, it was typically much lower layer count boards, thicker dielectrics, analog signals for sure. And folks were mainly talking about insertion loss and then probably about consistency of phase, which is not really used in HSD. Regarding the base materials going into those two buckets, it looked very much different. In HSD, you had all kinds of different dielectric sicknesses. very small increments, very often multiple choices for one dielectric sickness, having say a single ply construction, a dual ply construction all over the map. And as a result, the decay of these different constructions were not the same. That was okay in HSD and is okay in HSD because designers know how to deal with it, PCB shops know how to deal with it. And at the end of the day, you're doing impedance testing as an end of line testing. And once that's good, everybody is convinced it's fine and can go on. I'll have microwave on the other hand side. You have very distinct levels of dielectric thickness, say a 5 mil, a 10 mil, a 20 mil. You had basically no choice in construction because the designer was expecting to have a very same decay independent of the thickness of a base material. So. much, much less choices, easier to get across to a PCB shop what design I wanted to use. But if your design was a little bit more challenging, you probably were at the point where you would say, shoot, I would really like to have an intermediate thickness, which you typically didn't have in RF microwave. Impedance was not the one method to... check if a PCB was meeting specification at the end of a production. RF designers really don't want a PCB shop to change anything at all. They are not really believers that the PCB shops know what they're doing in that case. So they really are very strict in what you can do and what you can't do. So you have to wait different approaches. Now, what we have seen in the last couple of years is that Judy Warner (04:17) Ha ha ha. Alex (04:34) things got not so distinct anymore. The demarcation line was kind of blurring because in some cases, as I mentioned, it would be really nice, five mils to thin, 10 mils to Maybe I can get a six mil or I would rather have a four mil core. If I can get it, that would be really great for say aspect ratio and blind bias. So designers have on purpose picked from the HSD side of basic materials because it offered them more flexibility. The second part is if you think about advanced RF sensor, it creates a ton of data and you'd need to do something with the data. Now you can move that data to a different PCB where you have basically a kind of a computer that does all the manipulation of the data and so on. why would you have two different bolts? Why not put both together in one combined bolt having an RF portion on top and the HSD portion on the bottom? And all of a sudden you talk about why do I need different materials top and bottom? Maybe you can do both with the same material, with a similar material, things like that. So we really see things coming together and I believe it's to the benefit of Judy Warner (05:53) Mm-hmm. Alex (06:00) both the designers and the users at the end of the day. But it needs to have both sides getting an understanding what's different on say the other side of that formally separation line. So we understand that just specifying a material XYZ and not talking about construction is not really possible if you are not using RF material. If you're using HSD material, you need to be very, very clear. on what you want, what you need, and then everything is clear sailing. But if you don't do that, you can get really nasty surprise. Judy Warner (06:40) Well, I'm going to jump in right there because you and I share, I didn't realize this, but you and I share a little bit of a common background in that I worked more, I worked in board, you know, selling and marketing for board shops for 15 years. Left industry for a short while. When I came back, I went straight into RFPCB. So I've dealt with engineers in both those distinct places, but when I came back, I could quickly detect the massive disconnect between, especially when RF engineers started getting involved in the board layout. And there was a lot of confusion there. I know that you'd said to me that having, this is I've been saying for a long time, although I feel a little bit like an old person saying this, talk to your board shop. Alex (07:36) Yeah. Judy Warner (07:36) You know, which is essentially what you're saying is like, you can avoid a lot of pain if you get close to your board shop, but we're also used to moving digitally and doing all these things. There's a bit of a disconnect than there was when you and I were younger folks. so one of the things that I saw is that not only did the engineer have questions or concerns or may have been making consequential decisions about laminates, which was huge. But also the board shop, it's like it was sometimes the board shops weren't, they might be awesome at high speed digital designs. And they think, well, sure, RF sets at easy stuff, right? But then they had blind spots. So it's like the industry has been getting smarter and then moving, like you said, to this hybrid design. What are the, what kind of problems, and I think it's getting better and I hear you saying that, but what kind of problems does that create for the engineer and what kind of risks does that introduce? Alex (08:51) Yeah, I would say the main issue is you don't know what you don't know. So somebody coming from HSD may not be aware of pitfalls that can happen in our microwave. And the same thing happens with different direction. So I think if you know there is a, let's say, difficult area, you may not understand it, but you know there is something. Judy Warner (08:56) You Alex (09:17) you may be able to walk around it and get help and avoid creating a mess. But if you don't know that this may be a difficult, a critical thing, you are probably steaming full ahead into disaster. really, talking with each other is really key. And I have seen that in my time when I was at a PCB shop, we had customers, designers that were just pushing the data over the wall and expecting us to do the right thing. And then I had a couple of customers that were working differently, that were really looking for, let's say, collaborative approach. Getting feedback, we called it DFM. So they were asking about, is my design solid? If it borderline, is it a mess? Judy Warner (10:03) Mm-hmm Yes. Alex (10:14) So can you give us some guidance? That's an easy one. Stack ups, I have a stack up in mind and the PCB shop would go, yeah, but that's not really working that well. So giving feedback and if it's early on, the designer may be able with other respin to incorporate all these learnings. But also the other way around, as I said, HSD targeting board shop may not be aware of what difficulties may lie ahead in RF microwave. So it's really also the designer that needs to tell the board shop what's important to them. Best of course, if it's other drawings in readme file or whatnot, but talking with each other helps. Judy Warner (10:59) What drawings, Alex? Nobody makes drawings anymore and it makes me sad. Alex (11:06) It's probably not a piece of paper, but you still have, I would still call it a FAP drawing. Yeah, but anyway, you get more, yeah, yeah. You need to share information and if it's written, you can always go back and say, I don't remember. You don't have to say, don't remember what we discussed, but you can read it again. On the other hand side, really talking person to person is, Judy Warner (11:13) Yeah, just something that shares that information. Alex (11:35) very effective, would think. Probably more effective than just handing over a piece of statements. So I'm really a fan of working together. But of course it needs the openness from all sides involved to listen to the other side, to explain the other side what's important, and probably trying to find a compromise. And again, my experience from the past is whenever that happened, it made life so much easier for everyone. Judy Warner (11:57) Well, and I've been really Indeed. One of the things I was encouraged about, and I'm interested in your perspective is, particularly during COVID, I was working at Altium and they were just coming out with their cloud-based tool Altium 365, particularly for the young engineers that were more comfortable working in a digital environment. It gave them at least a digital way to communicate that I think felt a little better for them rather than picking up a telephone or an email or things that feel inefficient to them. So have you seen maybe some progress in the way that people might be leveraging electronic tools to communicate some of this information? Alex (12:54) Yeah, and I would kind of use as a joke that was the only good thing coming from COVID, that we all learned to communicate with each other without physically meeting. Before COVID, it was not that easy. People wanted to meet face to face and talk about it. And then all of a sudden we couldn't. And we used all the kind of different web conferencing tools. Judy Warner (13:02) Hahaha. Alex (13:21) messaging tools, email, whatnot. And we got more comfortable. So we really see a lot of communication through all kinds of different channels. And that's typically the start. Say talking about Isola, we have on our website, contact us button. So we get a lot of requests through the web from people that would never have reached out to a base material supplier in the past. Judy Warner (13:47) Right. Alex (13:48) and asking questions, sometimes very elaborate questions, sometimes it's just a very short couple of words question. And you start with that and more often than not, at the end of the day, you get to a point where you say, hey, it would probably be beneficial to just set up a web conference, talk about it a little bit and get into that discussion back and forth again. So yes, I would say that all these tools lowering the hurdle to start a communication with the other side. Definitely. Judy Warner (14:24) And I think the thing that I've observed about Isola, which has been really exciting is that, you know, with a material like Rogers 4350 from a fabricator standpoint, it's super very easy to use much like FR4 is, but some of the, you know, Teflons or the higher performance materials are harder or more challenging to process. But Isola came out with ITERA, I don't know how many years ago that was, but provided sort of that bridge point where it still gave you that higher performance, but in a way that the fabricator could manage. So can you talk a little bit about ITERA and as we talk about hybrid constructions and going from two boards to one board and hybrid sort of. One, ITERA, how it performs, and also if you have any case studies that sort of made engineer's life easier because of it, that'd be great. Alex (15:24) Yeah, yeah. Okay, so just to recap very quickly, when we started with putting a product like Ethereum T40 out that would compete with other guys, RF materials, we started with it as a kind of, yeah, we can do the same. That was my entry point. But very quickly, we learned and designers learned that as that product is so much easier for a PCB shop, so much more like FO4, you could build more complicated boards. So it turned really from a MeToo product to an enabling product. Really, the key topic here really is freedom of design. You can design all kinds of crazy boards with multiple sequential constructions, HDI, buried wires, blind wires, whatnot. Put everything together. and still get a manageable board from a PCB manufacturing point of perspective. So that was really a big, big, big point in being able to do more instead of what you could do in the past with a traditional material. And that really helped us in developing our ITERA MT40 push into the industry. And just to mention that, ITEL MT40 is what I call a dual-purpose product. So there's a large HSD offering with all kinds of different constructions, so all the flexibility regarding sicknesses and glass constructions you may expect on HSD side. But it also has a subset that is more like traditional RF microwaves over multiples of five mils, the same decay on every sickness, things like that. but ultimately it's the same material. It's just a subset of constructions on the left side. So that means you can put that all together in one board. And talking about a case study, this had been a steerable antenna, basically by phase shifting a steerable antenna without having to mechanically rotate the antenna. And this was based on traditional RF materials, but because of so many phase shifters on the board, the design was very complex. And the PCB shop attempting to build the board, they failed miserably. It was just impossible to do. And that was in the early stages when we were pretty much an unknown in the RF world. And the designer decided to give it a try and used our material. And even the very first build, we got some functioning boards, probably not optimized to, but it worked from start. And that really was showing the potential in having a material that is easy to handle. Now, ITIL MT40 is just one part of it. There are a number of other materials like the Tuck-N-Hand-D-G, the Astra MT77, that are very similar from a resin formulation. So we work together beautifully, but you have a full range of performance. Judy Warner (18:30) Right. Alex (18:54) you are not only stuck with one type of material, but you can augment that with materials that are even higher performance and you just use it where you need it so you don't have to spend all money for the highest end material if you need only on a couple of layers. So you have a lot of flexibility there. So flexibility really is the key. Judy Warner (19:07) Right, right. I had a, think it was a, excuse me, hold on a second. There's a saying about blessed are the flexible for they shall not be broken. So I love that sense of flexibility that that gives you. And as you're talking, I was wondering, because people can use say you can always use dissimilar materials from multiple vendors, but is there a benefit of using some of your high-performance materials with similarly made other isolates? Is there like a homogeneity to being able to, is there a benefit there, Alex, of those materials working together from the same manufacturer? Alex (19:53) Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's actually a great question and kind of a great marketing tool for ourselves, of course. So there are a couple of benefits. First of all, there's a single point of contact. So we all try to avoid it, but if something doesn't work out, a board fails and you have materials from several suppliers. Let's the finger pointing begin. Judy Warner (20:16) Ha ha. Alex (20:36) One material supplier will say, it's not our materials, it's our other guys. And the second guy in the game will say, yeah, no, no, it's not us, it's a third guy, and so on. So having a single supplier will make things much easier in case something gets difficult. Now, that should not be the main reason for picking something like that because we all try to avoid failures and mistakes if we can. And the other part is that, of course, We know our high TGF4 materials, know our HSD materials, our F materials, and we know how we work together. So we can kind of ensure that they can be combined without any issues. We even have a couple of very popular combinations. We have reliability data like HATS testing, highly accelerated thermal stress testing. So we do have data to show how say, Iterium T40 would work with 370 HR. So lower loss material in combination with a standard loss high TGF for material. And that really helps a designer that thinks about a hybrid construction, but is afraid of, is that going to be reliable? Can I really bet on that? And if I can turn around and say, look, here's the data. It shows you a good performance from a reliability point of view. Judy Warner (21:41) Okay. Alex (22:04) that makes things a lot easier. So that for sure is helping. And then we can be more, let's say helpful. A lot of designers struggle with many, many materials on the market. And it's true. When I started, had low TGF of four, high TGF of four. Yeah. And now it's so complicated and you really need a guiding hand. Judy Warner (22:20) Right. And it's not always clear how they work together. Alex (22:34) if we understand what a designer is up to, and we know our materials, we can get really as solid as possible recommendation out of them. I think that's very important as well. Judy Warner (22:49) Well, I think you're bringing up excellent points and points that I really resonate with having worked directly with design engineers around laminates for PCP shop is, is find a way to communicate, but communicate with your laminate manufacturer like Alex, and then your board shop and kind of is sort of the trifecta, right? But to have that kind of insight, Plus having reports that can tell you about reliability will save you so much time and money. In the long run, you'll find that you won't have to re-spend and whatever because a lot of that data has already been discovered, extracted and reported on. you know, don't be a... My advice to design engineers is don't be a lone wolf. Like connect with your sort of ecosystem of your laminate and board manufacturer wherever you can. And as Alex said to... early, early, early, early before you make critical design decisions that aren't easily to walk back if you get new information. the earlier you can involve these folks in your design, you are going to be so much happier. And I'm sure Alex, you have lots of stories about that, about the difference between bringing designs in early before they were too far down the road. Alex (24:09) Yeah. Yeah, I think really talking with each other is the key component. And I even would really recommend you call it the Rifecter, really have a freeway communication between the PCB shop, the designer and the base material supplier. Yes, we are sitting on different sides of a table, but at the end, we are sitting at the same table, at least I would hope so. And talking... as openly as possible. again, a PCB manufacturer may have his view on what a material should do and whatnot. designer has some requirements. We have some knowledge about what can be done, what cannot be done. And as we started, we have a lot of folks having spent a lot of time in PCB manufacturing. So we speak the same language. And having a free exchange on these things is really helpful. I understood there are some areas. where you are limited with confidentiality and things like that. But outside of that, the more we can talk, the more openly we can talk, I think the better it gets. And besides that, it's so much more fun. And we all want to have fun at work as well, right? Judy Warner (25:27) It is fun because we all like being... Yeah, well, I mean, I think everybody here knows, anyone that's listening or watching, is it's the spirit behind why I started a podcast called The Ecosystem so we can all get together, at least digitally, if not in person and have these conversations. By the way, Alex, I just launched a new website and there is... I created a forum and I'd love to... put in a forum about laminates and I just, so would you be okay if I pinged you to take a look there where maybe you could help people? That'd be great. I just thought about that and I thought that'd be a great way that people, know, they can go right to your website, which I will share all those links and get those from you. But also folks, when I get on the forum and hear from Alex directly, feel free to. Alex (26:02) Yes, sure, sure, go ahead. Judy Warner (26:21) feel free to hop in there and start conversations digitally if you can't have them in person. But early and stay connected. I think that's the message that we can all agree on. Well, Alex, again, thank you so much for your time and expertise. I know that you have been doing this for a long time and you have a lot of expertise. So I appreciate you coming on and sharing all the things you've known, especially as we Alex (26:33) Yeah, absolutely. Judy Warner (26:48) the lines blur between high speed and RF because everything's connected these days. So it's only going to become more, not less. So thank you again for joining us. Alex (26:50) Hmm? Thank you for having me, Julie. was my pleasure and really enjoying the podcast. Thank you so much. Judy Warner (27:06) Thank you. For our listeners, thanks so much for joining us today. Make sure you go check out our new website that we just launched. And I will open up a thread about laminants and I'm sure that Isola has a chat and a way to reach out, but I'll also put some links behind to their pages that have data sheets or some of the reliability reports and things like that that Alex mentioned. We will see you next time. I trust you enjoyed this conversation. and we'll see you next week on the ecosystem. And that is a wrap, my friend. Okay, now let me stop. Pretty good. Alex (27:40) Thank you. Bye bye.