Professionals to share: the choice of PCB base material guide

Choosing the right surface treatment and optimal design is an important step to ensure excellent product performance, but is this the end of it? No, you must also make sure that the factory has the specified material, and that the factory can use the material through UL certification. Ncab know that the choice of materials is diverse. With our professional and technical knowledge, we can provide guidance and assistance in material selection and specification.

Rigid materials

How should the material be specified?

Our advice is to try not to specify a particular brand or material type to avoid limiting your choice when the factory is eventually selected. The reason is that many well-known brand materials in our factory is widely used at the same time, some factories have several brands of materials can meet the required material specifications. At this point, the availability and price may become the determinant of which brand to use.

This does not mean that you cannot specify the material you know, and that is not the case. If you know from experience that a material is appropriate for your product, then you can list the product and add the "or equivalent" PostScript, and the Ncab technician and purchasing team will review the various materials and provide you with an alternative product that meets functional needs without impacting performance.

Each well-known material manufacturer is classified according to the IPC 4101 (base material specification for rigid and multilayer printed circuit boards) to use this specification to determine performance characteristics and classify them, while defining the characteristics of the substrate in detail, and the factory follows the IPC-4101-XXX classification to make an informed choice, and ensure that performance meets expected requirements.

Key factors in specifying material properties

Considering the properties of the substrate, the relative mechanical characteristics of the material (especially the correlation energy during the thermal cycle/welding operation) and the electrical characteristics should be considered. These are generally considered to be the most common factors in the selection process of standard products. This is because all the materials considered are to achieve the UL flammability grade V-0.

The key material features are shown below.

The following table extracts some of the features of the IPC-4101 classification, highlighting some of the details already mentioned.