Rogers Corp. exhibited and presented a white paper concerning thermal conductivity at the DesignCon 2012 conference and exhibition. DesignCon, held January 31 through February 1, 2012, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, Calif., is one of the electronic industry’s key meeting places for printed-circuit-board (PCB) designers.

Rogers’ circuit-materials expert, Al Horn, Associate Research Fellow, presented “Measurement and Modeling of the Effect of Laminate Thermal Conductivity and Dielectric Loss on the Temperature Rise of HF Transmission Lines and Active Devices.”

Representatives from Rogers Advanced Circuit Materials Division were also on hand at booth #810 to offer guidance on the use of the company’s high-performance PCB materials, including Theta® and RO4000® LoPro™ materials.

Rogers’ halogen-free theta materials are engineered for outstanding mechanical and electrical performance in high-speed digital circuits. With a coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of 50 ppm/°C in the z-axis, they have about 30 percent less expansion, across the same temperature range, than standard FR-4 for improved reliability of plated through holes (PTH) in multilayer circuits. The low dissipation factor of 0.0118 at 1 GHz ensures that theta materials preserve signal integrity in the most challenging digital circuit designs. Theta materials feature a dielectric constant of 3.90 at 1 GHz. In addition, these dependable laminates support RoHS-compliant manufacturing processes and meet UL-94-V-0 level flammability requirements.

RO4000 LoPro circuit materials are a low-profile copper foil option available on the RO4000 series that helps designers significantly drive down insertion loss and improve signal integrity for ATE, wireless and networking applications. This low cost enhancement to the RO4000 series of dielectric materials is fully compatible with FR-4 fabrication processes and lead-free assembly temperatures. These laminates achieve low PIM values, which are critical for antenna designs and feature a low z-axis coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) over a wide temperature range for reliable plated-thru-hole performance in multilayer circuits.