Another year of tremendous growth and progress at DITF.  We’ve increased our investment in infrastructure to build a premier thin-film services company.  We’ve continued to add capital equipment where our customers needs dictate in order to provide the most professional and expeditious manufacturing of product for the market.  We will continue to respond to your needs in 2011 by continuing to update the company.

In 2010, we added to our Class 10,000 clean room for photolithography processes.  This will instantly improve yields and ultimately provide the customer base with better pricing.  We’ve also added to our dicing and laser trimming capital to increase throughput for the increased production we experienced throughout the year.

We have many capital plans for 2011 as well as strategic service offerings planned from your requests through the year.   We look forward to furthering our existing relationships and entering into new ones during 2011!

On September 29, 2010, DITF received our second consecutive 3-Star Supplier Award from Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems.  The ceremony was top-notch, one of the most professional events we’ve seen. 

The night began with a social hour.  Here, we got to mingle with many senior managers within Raytheon as well as representatives from the other 3-Star and 4-Star recipients.  Each company had a banner showing the award as well as graphics depicting the typical products manufactured by that supplier.   We learned that there were 32 suppliers receiving 3-Star awards and only 2 receiving 4-Star Awards.  This year there were no 5-Star suppliers.

In order to receive a 3-Star award, the first criteria is to meet a 95% delivery rating with a 95% quality rating.  However, this only serves to narrow down the field.  Further criteria is defined that allows Raytheon to determine the best of the best.  Many factors are considered and various disciplines within the organization, across facilities, are solicited for input on the companies.  It is clear that Raytheon has given great consideration to the characteristics used to determine who should receive awards and used a fair and objective system.  Raytheon SAS has over 3,000 suppliers and with only 34 award recipients, only 1% were selected to receive awards.  We are certainly honored and in a select group of suppliers

After the social hour, we were escorted to a dining room for a fantastic three course meal.  Seating was prearranged and again, Raytheon had thought out every detail, placing suppliers and Raytheon personnel strategically at each table to allow for maximum networking opportunities.  This included personnel from multiple facilities as well as multiple suppliers all integrated at the dinner table.  the meal and conversation were terrific and before we knew it, the presentations were underway. 

Raytheon pulled out all the stops in bringing a keynote speaker to the event.  Steve Nordel is a Program Director for Raytheon.  He had recently been deployed to Iraq as a Navy Reservist and flew the EA-6B Prowler in OIF combat operations.  Steve told us about the conditions in Iraq and narrated a moving slideshow of his experience in Iraq.  Steve really brought home the message that we are all ultimately working to provide the warfighter the best equipment available to protect our troops.  He had the entire audience engaged in his description and received a standing ovation for his talk.

Without missing a beat, we then moved into the awards ceremony.  Again, a most professional presentation, each company was introduced by our Master of Ceremonies, Catherine Blades.  Catherine read a short bio on each company which was then accompanied by a narrated video of products, people and technology overview of each company.  During this bio, the attending representatives of each company were welcomed to the stage for a photograph with Janet Duffy, Vice President of Raytheon SAS Supply Chain and Robert Lindeman, Vice President of Raytheon SAS Mission Assurance.

Before we knew it, the event was over.  Lasting over 2 hours, it seemed like only minutes had passed.  Raytheon certainly put together a top notch ceremony to motivate all suppliers to work toward the goal of becomming a partner in helping Raytheon provide out warfighter with the cutting edge tools to defend our freedom and provide US and Coalition Forces worldwide with real Mission Assurance!

As we continue to grow, we took advantage of an opportunity to learn the Lean and Six Sigma tools to apply them to our business.  Last week we attended a class on Lean and Six Sigma.  I attended the week long classes along with our QA Manager and Laser Engineer.   We spent the week developing skills to implement Lean throughout the operation.  These tools apply to manufacturing as well as general office environments to help organize our work flow and help us be more efficient. 

The tools for six sigma play an even greater role in our road to excellence.  Although we were familiar with many of the tools six sigma offers, collecting them under a program to be embraced throughout the organization will continue to drive us toward higher yields and throughput  – providing our customers with more cost effective solutions.

All that remains is for us to take our exam and we will have three certified green belts – a good beginning to developing our future state!

In the circuit application, our customers tend to use either a solder or epoxy (conductive or non conductive) to attach the ceramic interconnect to the package. Many users encounter bleed through of the material used in circuit attach through the holes used to transition to ground. This bleed through can impact the adjacent circuitry or other parts mounted on the carrier. Part aesthetics and part reliability, these items may require cleanup and rework prior to finalizing the assembly. We all know the impact of the costs of rework to final products. Further interest is that the via must be a specific diameter proportional to substrate thickness in order to ensure complete metal coverage in the hole. Also of concern in a critical electrical design is the inductance and series resistance of the holes. This inductance forces some designers to increase the quantity of via holes to minimize the inductive and resistive impact to circuits providing a better grounding.

One method of avoiding these items is to fill the hole with a conductive or non conductive medium. A non conductive medium such as polyimide will prevent any of the circuit attachment material from being deposited on the surface of the circuit. However, many of these non-conductive materials leave organics behind that can inhibit soldering and, more critically, wire bonding. Non conductive materials are added to the holes after complete processing of the circuit since they typically cannot withstand the processing requirements during fabrication.

Conductive materials are preferred and they vary from alloys and pastes (forced into the holes and fired to a hardened state) to solid metals. Alloys and pastes eliminate the bleed through of attachment material and help the inductance and series resistance but not to the fullest extent possible. Finally, solid metals such as Gold (Au) and Copper (Cu) provide the best and most reliable method of filling the holes available. These also provide the best thermal conductivity and grounding, virtually eliminating series resistance and inductance concerns. The perception however is that these via fill materials are cost prohibitive. While Gold is certainly costly, currently running at about $1,200 per troy ounce, Copper provides a very cost effective mechanism of adding this feature to a design at under $4 per pound!
We’ve all heard the news stories of people risking their lives to steal copper and sell it for a quick gain. The fact is that copper is still a relatively inexpensive material to add to your circuit. Diablo Industries Thin Film has perfected the process of filling via holes with SOLID PURE COPPER. No alloys, no binders no impurities, just solid Cu. Further, we do this regularly, in production, on Alumina (Al2O3), Aluminum Nitride (AlN) and Beryllium Oxide (BeO). The benefits far outweigh the minimal costs of this technology. Solid Cu provides the best thermal conductivity of deposited metals available at 393 W/m·K. The series resistance is all but negligible. Best of all, the surface is planar and can accept components mounted directly on the via or vias as well as direct wire bonding to the via. There is no additional tooling cost and the cost impact to the circuit is on the order of 10%.

DITF has invested in space qualification of our solid Cu fill process. The report is available on our web site at www.DITF.com/technology.html We think that via fill with copper can provide you a competitive advantage in your circuit designs and encourage you to test our metal!