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Calumet Electronics is working to be one of many first IC substrate suppliers in the US, serving to to fill a vital hole within the home electronics provide chain.
“Calumet might be one of many first, if not the primary, to deliver scalable IC substrate capability to the US,” COO Todd Brassard stated in an unique interview with EE Instances. “We’ve got been growing this functionality for about three years. We’re almost accomplished with our first substrate demo-builds in cooperation with a number of protection and industrial OEMs. We’re not even in manufacturing but, and potential demand for our substrates is already over 1.5 million models a yr.”
The built-in circuit substrate business, value $10 billion yearly, is certainly all situated in Asia. Because the U.S. authorities goals to rebuild an electronics ecosystem with the help of the not too long ago handed CHIPS Act, business consultants say IC substrates are prone to stay one of many weakest hyperlinks within the home provide chain.
Whereas chips proceed to shrink, the printed circuit boards (PCBs) connecting ICs have lagged that miniaturization pattern. IC substrates act as interposers, bridging the dense I/O connections on chips with the a lot wider line-pitch widths on PCBs. With out IC substrates within the manufacturing ecosystem, the U.S. lacks a whole provide chain, significantly for electronics utilized in protection methods.
“On one facet of our enterprise, now we have prime protection and industrial OEMs with powerful design challenges to unravel which might be experiencing ever-increasing dangers with their Asia provide chains, with few or no home sourcing choices,” Brassard stated. “And on the opposite facet, now we have home supplies and chemical suppliers with modern applied sciences, and tools producers rallying to be a part of the answer. Within the center is the fabricator, like Calumet, who should sew novel options along with shut collaboration from business consultants.”
Calumet is making a kind of IC substrate with semi-additive copper function formations.
Matt Kelly, the chief technologist at international electronics affiliation IPC, stated in March that the U.S. is as many as 25 years behind Asia in substrates.
Main suppliers
The main suppliers are Unimicron and ASE Group of Taiwan, Ibiden of Japan, and SCC of China. Unimicron has invested greater than $700 million in R&D and capability growth for superior flip-chip substrates by means of 2022, based on market watcher Mordor Intelligence.
North America has no functionality to supply superior flip-chip ball-grid array (FCBGA) or flip-chip chip-scale packaging (FCCSP) substrates, based on a November 2021 IPC report, the latest report out there from IPC. To develop into a participant within the FCBGA section, it takes an funding of at the least $1 billion, the report stated.
With out a North American provide of substrates, chips made within the U.S. should be shipped to Asia after which again to the U.S., successfully lengthening the availability chain, the IPC report stated.
“We’re one of many few PCB producers that survived offshoring to Asia from 2003 to 2015, and never simply: by the pores and skin of our enamel,” Brassard stated. “We determined to attempt to offshore-proof ourselves by pushing into work that may’t be carried out offshore. That finally ends up being protection, aerospace, medical, merchandise below export controls, like ITAR, however extra typically, issues which have mental property.”
Through the unique video name with EE Instances, Brassard confirmed a prototype substrate however declined to permit images.
“I’ve already pushed the bounds simply holding this up,” he stated, nodding towards extra on a desk in his workplace that he doesn’t dare to indicate.
Calumet goals to provide custom-designed substrates to protection contractors, which account for about 8% of the corporate’s enterprise, in addition to different prospects making tools for 5G, satellite tv for pc communications, and well being care.
One of many Division of Protection contractors that Calumet is working with wants superior packaging, together with hyper-small, hyper-fast interposers, Brassard stated.
“We’ve got discovered that an OEM can go to Japan and say, ‘We want a selected {custom} substrate at very low quantity,’ and so they’ll say, ‘Sorry, we’re not within the enterprise,’ and American firms can not compel one other nation to supply merchandise for the U.S.”
Filling an order for substrates from Japan can take years, based on Brassard.
“We all know one firm that ordered a thousand substrates from Japan in 2019, however they nonetheless don’t have them. Japan may put end-use restrictions on merchandise. They don’t essentially need their merchandise to be included into war-fighter finish functions.”
PCB maker
Calumet, with about 350 workers, ranks among the many high 5 U.S. PCB manufacturing amenities below one roof by capability, Brassard stated. “We’re a small enterprise, however we ship 4 million circuit boards a yr.”
Through the Covid pandemic, when the Asian provide of PCBs for ventilators vanished, Calumet produced 235,000 circuit boards in about three months to fulfill demand, Brassard stated.
“We’re on the level the place now we have solely two or three firms in the US that may produce very complicated, high-density interconnect circuit boards. We could also be, so far as we will inform, the one, or at the least considered one of a only a few, PCB outlets within the U.S. that’s growing manufacturing capabilities for natural substrates to assist fill a significant hole within the home microelectronics ecosystem.” Brassard added, “Document demand of typical circuit boards makes it unattractive for PCB producers to tackle the excessive prices of R&D and scaling extra complicated applied sciences now that their revenue margins are bettering after a 20-year drought.”
To ramp up manufacturing for PCBs, Calumet has been investing in processes like electroless nickel immersion gold (ENIG) end, scorching press, and copper plating capability. Investments for substrates embody fine-line lithography tools and instruments for high-density electrical take a look at and optical inspection.
“We’ve got so many digital methods that typically you begin listening to the robotic overlords as an alternative of your staff who’re on the road, and also you don’t wish to do this,” Brassard stated.
“Advancing workforce goes to be important in the US, in addition to beginning to acknowledge that jobs in manufacturing are prestigious. That’s one factor Asia does higher than we do.”
The corporate goals for yields of as much as 90% on its superior PCBs.
“Every single circuit board goes to be extremely worthwhile,” Brassard stated. “A mistake on a $300 panel could be very completely different than making a mistake on a $20,000 panel or a $200,000 panel.”
That quest for top yield will rely on nearer communication that helps obtain manufacturing success.
“We’ve got fractured our manufacturing throughout the nation and the world over, and we will’t talk with one another very successfully, so we will’t innovate,” based on Brassard. “Innovation doesn’t come by means of moments of inspiration. It comes by means of iteration.”
There are indicators that U.S. electronics producers are extra conscious of the dangers they face.
“Some OEMs haven’t found out that they’ve an issue but; others have carried out the analysis, carried out the surveys, seemed throughout their huge organizations, and drawn some conclusions that there’s not sufficient capability within the business to serve their firm, not to mention all firms, all of the protection and industrial OEMs,” Brassard stated. “We’ve got additionally had some distinguished manufacturers asking us about substrate capability. They’re asking us, ‘Are you able to decide to constructing 1,000,000 of this stuff in 2023?’”
Brassard pointed to the vulnerabilities of what he calls a “FedEx provide chain”:
“It goes forwards and backwards, and there are such a lot of alternatives for unhealthy actors to intervene. We’re dedicated to U.S. manufacturing. We caught to it, and it nearly price us our firm for some time there, again in 2007, 2008, when all of the PCB outlets have been getting wiped off the planet.”
