UltraSource, Inc. Releases New Thin Film Microcircuit CopperVia

Michael Casper, President & CEO of UltraSource, Inc., a supplier of custom thin film circuits and ceramic interconnect devices, announced the new CopperVia, based on their existing patented UltraVia process. The CopperVia was first introduced at the June 2012 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium/Exhibition in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. UltraSource’s new CopperVia process, fills vias with pure copper material in order to provide a low cost, highly conductive, extremely reliable electrical and thermal path in ceramic thin film substrates. Like its sister technology, UltraVia, the CopperVia virtually eliminates epoxy or solder bleed-through while maximizing thermal and electrical conductivity and reliability. 

CopperVia offers designers additional flexibilities for today’s thin film microcircuit applications

The new CopperVia process extends UltraSource’s existing portfolio feature set offering engineer’s additional flexibility in meeting the design challenges of complex and high density planar, 2.5-D, 3-D, and multilayer thin film circuitry. Casper explained that he is investing significant resources to meet today’s aggressive customer requirements for thin film microcircuit and passive element structures. “RF and microwave hybrid circuits, electronic interposers and interconnects, mandates high levels of electrical and thermal performance on various alumina ceramic based substrates” says Casper. Kevin Callery, Director of Business Development went on to explain that solid filled vias provides a low inductance, microwave grounding path, allowing high performance RF circuits to be assembled in a thermally efficient surface mount configuration. “CopperVia is being offered to provide engineers additional design flexibilities in meeting all of their requirements while simultaneously lowering the costs of multilayer designs. The CopperVia enables a lower cost thin film structure than using other precious metals for making a signal or power interconnect between the planar layers of high frequency circuits and meets the reliability requirements for harsh environment applications such as defense and security systems, fiber optic transceivers, infrared detection, radar, and medical applications.” 

CopperVia added to UltraSource, Inc. Technology Platform

The CopperVia provides designers with a cost effective technology to enable high performance DC, RF and microwave, optical structures, thin film planar and multilayer circuits, and passive component structures. The CopperVia has been added as an integral part of the UltraSource Technology Platform, providing designers the most comprehensive suite of thin film solutions available anywhere. The UltraSource Technology Platform offers competitive advantages for designers looking to break through to new levels of performance in the areas of integration and miniaturization, speed and signal integrity, power dissipation, reduced cost, and increased bandwidth. 

About UltraSource
Founded in 1991, UltraSource, Inc. (USI) is one of the world’s largest thin film foundries offering leading edge quick turn, custom, and volume production services of complex microcircuits for technically demanding high density analog, mixed-signal, digital, power, hybrid circuit, RF, microwave and millimeter wave applications. Electronics system design is placing increasing emphasis on high frequency performance and reduced package size; UltraSource products and services deliver thin film microcircuit solutions that enable customers to advance towards evolutionary bandwidth performance, integration, and quality. UltraSource solutions include volume thin film products as well as advanced high density thin film multilayer interconnects and circuits customized for aerospace/defense, homeland security, electronic medical devices applications, piezoelectric actuators, I/R imaging, sensor, hermetic seal metallization, resistive heaters for optical lenses, telecommunications infrastructure, fiber optics, broadband networking, test and measurement, and many other specialty electronic applications. UltraSource, Inc. is headquartered in Hollis, NH, USA. For more information, visit www.ultrasource.com.