The Cutting Edge...of Specialty Materials

 

   

During this installment of The Cutting Edge, I will talk about specialty materials.  Specifically, piezoelectric, pyroelectric, and ferroelectric materials will be addressed.  The properties of these materials have been studied and applied to technology for a little over a century now, but materials that exhibit pyroelectric properties were first recognized by Greek scholars in 400 B.C.  The Curie brothers during their original study of pyroelectric materials then discovered the piezoelectric effect and went on to characterize those materials, as well.  Today these materials are used in devices such as heat and pressure sensors, energy harvesting devices, printed memory, gas grill lighters, and sonar arrays just to name a few.

 

Piezoelectric materials exhibit a special response property when the materials are compressed.  When pressure is applied, these materials give off an electrical charge.  Conversely, when an electrical charge is applied, the materials expand.  This property was first utilized in sonar devices during WWI and expanded to consumer devices after WWII.

 

Pyroelectric materials give off a temporary charge when exposed to temperature change.  They have found use mostly in temperature sensors, but studies have expanded to attempt to utilize this property in energy harvesting devices.  One such device puts these materials in solar cells to harvest energy from the Infrared spectrum thereby expanding the efficiency of a solar panel array.

 

Ferroelectric materials are a very specialized type of material that displays unique properties.  They will flip polarization when an electrical field is applied and reverse their polarization when that field is reversed.  This property is being applied to make binary memory materials for printed electronics applications.

 

If you would like to find out more about these materials, please feel free to attend my presentation at the IPC APEX EXPO show on Wednesday, March 26^th at 1pm. There will be a Printed Electronics series of talks on the 25^th and 26^th about this and other topics during the conference, so please check the schedule for topics that may be of interest.

 

Sincerely,

Josh Goldberg

Marketing Specialist

      

At the 2014 EIPC Winter Conference

    

I had the pleasure of attending the 2014 EIPC winter conference in Geneva Switzerland at the end of January.  The conference was well attended by PCB manufacturers, end users, suppliers, consultants, research groups, distributors and agents.  The schedule included short presentations from a variety of attendees. Presentations included new equipment ideas, new test procedures and new chemistries to name just a few.  All eyes will be focused on this meeting next January as rumor has it there will be a mind altering presentation given by Taiyo America.

 

The two day event allowed enough break time during the day to meet, mingle and otherwise network with many of the participants.  Near the end of day one we were treated to an outing to nearby CERN to tour the research facility and see the Large Hadron Collider.  CERN is the world's largest Particle Physics laboratory; few people realize that the World Wide Web was invented at CERN in 1990 by two employees, Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau.  The size and scope of this laboratory is no less than amazing, and to hear that it is home to over 14,000 employees was even more impressive.  To learn more about the projects at CERN visit their website at www.cern.ch.  The day ended with a group dinner at an authentic Swiss restaurant (fondue, YUM).  Being of Swiss decent this was a real treat for me, and when they lit my dessert on fire I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore.

Day two was more of the same, but it had a different feel to it now that I knew most of the people sitting in the meeting room.  Presentations instantly became more interesting regardless of subject matter. The tour at CERN was the topic du jour during the breaks.  I quickly built relationships with people from around the world who I didn't know just 24 hours earlier.  This conference was of value to me from a personal and a professional point of view, therefore I highly recommend attending this great event.   

 

Donnie Monn

Business Development &

European Sales Manager

[email protected] 

p: 651.491.4199

   

In this edition of our newsletter we are very pleased to bring you an interview with our industry's foremost prognosticator Walt Custer. Walt is our industry's "go-to" guy when it comes to talking about where we've been and where we are going. We are thrilled to bring you this six pack of questions with Walt.

WALT: Beginning in the early 2000s OEMs were driven (often by their shareholders) to subcontract their manufacturing and concentrate on their core competencies, especially developing new products. Manufacturing was shifted to third parties in lower cost regions - especially China.  Ultimately the entire supply chain followed.  Manufacturing costs initially plummeted and volumes rose especially for high volume consumer goods.  

Domestic companies are now looking carefully at their "total delivered cost" and considering re-shoring to improve their response time and protect their intellectual assets while still remaining competitive on price. A "Buy America" movement and an effort to increase local employment have also supported on-shoring. To this end Motorola began manufacturing its Moto X smartphones in Texas and Apple is making its latest Mac Pro in Arizona.  On a wider scale thanks to NAFTA incentives, local proximity and inexpensive labor, Mexico has become the second largest auto importer to the USA.  Admittedly many of the electronic components used by Motorola (now Microsoft), Apple and the Mexican car plants come from China but N. American manufacturing is slowly returning. And there's more, appliance resellers like Walmart have pledged to source more US-made products and for innovative startups product intros will often be done based upon local manufacturing. Short term this will mean more prototype and low volume PCB production in the USA, not a lot initially; but I believe the "tide is turning."

So to answer your question - on-shoring is real but the short term impact will be small.

  

DAN:  There you have it, some information you can take to the bank, I love the idea of our shipments growing 5 to 6% this year, don't you?!