Remtec designs and manufactures cost effective ceramic leadless SMT substrates, chip carriers and packages for direct PCB mount using PCTF® (Plated Copper on Thick Film) technology. Packages house active and passive RF and microwave components as well as multichip modules. A PCTF SMT package includes three essential features: copper metallization, copper-plated solid plugged via holes, and PCTF wraparounds (castellations). Copper metallization is quite suitable for RF signal transmission and also creates an excellent heat spreading effect beneath a semiconductor die.

Solid via holes and castellations serve multiple functions. They greatly reduce the thermal resistance of the ceramic base and act as signal and ground connections for the package. They also provide low inductance interconnects, which are essential for good high-frequency performance. The DC resistance of plugged via holes is below 0.5 m½. In addition, solid via holes with thermal conductivity greater than 200 W/mx°C result in thermal resistance below 1°C/W and provide excellent thermal management.

The time-proven capability of directly soldering large leadless ceramic surface-mountable RF modules (greater than 0.75″ on a side) onto PCBs is a unique benefit. Other benefits are excellent solderability and the capability of withstanding multiple and prolonged soldering operations at 300°C and higher as well as compliance with RoHS requirements without any degradation in package integrity and reliability.

Parts supply to a customer in large panels with a multiple-image format for automatic assembly significantly reduces cost of PCTF substrates and packages.

Technical data are shown on the reverse side.

Leadless SMT ceramic packages and substrates feature consistent dielectric properties, enhanced thermal management, and improved reliability. This packaging approach also supports direct attachment of large ceramic packages and substrates to printed-circuit boards (PCBs), robust RoHS-compliant soldering, and large-panel multiplearray formats. Substrates and packages based on PCTF technology have been used at frequencies from DC to 24 GHz, especially where thermally demanding applications require low thermal resistance of 1 to 2°C/W or lower.

Typical applications include RF power amplifiers, MMIC modules, encoders, optical drivers, attenuators, filters and transmit-receive modules for telecom, satellite communication, optical networks, WiMAX and other communication markets as well as for radar, military and aerospace applications.

Please send your electronic files in DXF and/or DWG formats to sales@remtec.com. More detailed design guidelines are available upon request.

Remtec, a RoHS compliant and ISO 9001:2000 registered company, provides ceramic packaging solutions for microwave/RF components and modules, optoelectronics and power electronics. Additional data are available at www.remtec.com