Emerging Substrate Technologies for Harsh-Environment Automotive Electronics Applications

The requirements for harsh environment (e.g. on-engine, on-or in-transmission) electronic controllers in automotive applications have been steadily becoming more and more stringent. Along with the environmental concerns come the challenges of meeting overall size constraints required of increasingly complex controllers by utilizing finer features and geometries. Electronic substrate technologists have been responding to this challenge effectively in an effort to meet the performance, size and cost requirements. This paper deals with two primary interconnection substrate technologies that are poised to meet the challenge: 1) organic laminate based high performance printed wiring boards and 2) ceramic based substrates.