Ceramic PCB for Refrigeration Industry

Ceramic PCB for Refrigeration Industry

Despite the adjustment of the air-conditioning industry, the demand for central air-conditioning and refrigerators from commercial buildings, public buildings and large villas are still in the growth period. In the short term, the area of new commercial real estate is still growing rapidly, supporting 15% of central air-conditioning. At the same time, the refrigeration industry will be driven by energy efficiency policies and import substitution, coupled with the further expansion of the cold chain market, the demand for refrigeration and air conditioning equipment will become larger and larger.

However, in order to start diversified development of the refrigeration industry, we must first find the bottleneck of constraints. The biggest bottleneck in the air-conditioning equipment and refrigeration industry on the market is the insufficient heat-dissipation conditions for the cooling fins. As long as the cooling chip is burned out for more than two seconds without heat dissipation, heat dissipation is one of the first problems currently solved.

Ceramic PCB is one of the best shortcuts to solve the problem of insufficient heat dissipation of the cooling plate.

What is Ceramic PCB?

Ceramic PCBs are usually composed of a metal core, typically alumina (Al2O3), aluminum nitride (AIN), beryllium oxide (BeO), and boron nitride (BN). According to the difference in PCB manufacturing, ceramic PCBs can be classified into the following 3 types.

Thick film ceramic PCB

Thick-film ceramic circuit boards are produced by traditional screen printing technology. In general, in the process of using the screen printing method to make the line, usually due to the problem of the screen version, it is easy to produce a rough line and inaccurate alignment. Therefore, the accuracy of the thick-film ceramic circuit board has gradually disappeared for cooling sheets with smaller and smaller size requirements in the future.

Low temperature co-fired multilayer ceramic PCB

Low-temperature co-fired multi-layer ceramic technology, using ceramic as the substrate material, printing the circuit on the substrate by screen printing, integrating the multilayer ceramic circuit boards, and finally sintering through low temperature. The metal circuit layer of the low-temperature co-fired multi-layer ceramic PCB is also made by the screen printing process, and the alignment error may also be caused by the problem of the meshing. In addition, after the multilayer ceramics are laminated and sintered, the shrinkage ratio is also considered. 

LAM technology ceramic PCB

The advantages of the new emerging LAM technology are not well known to the general public, but the ceramic circuit board produced by LAM technology does not have to consider the problem of the tension in the thick film manufacturing process and the shrinkage ratio after multi-layer pressure sintering, and does not consider the application of the thin film ceramic substrate. The pollution caused by the sputtering and electric/electrochemical deposition process, so LAM technology not only solves the problem of heat dissipation bottleneck but also puts the environmental protection work into the long-term plan in advance. 

At present, the refrigeration film on the market requires stable voltage and good heat dissipation, and the thermal conductivity of the ceramic PCB made by LAM technology and the material of the substrate can meet the development requirements. 

Why use Ceramic PCB?

Ceramic PCBs have higher thermal conductivity and low coefficient of expansion (CTE) than the metal core PCBs and FR4 PCBs. Among them, alumina ceramic circuit boards are commonly used, of which the thermal conductivity is about 20-36 W/m·K. A more preferable choice is the aluminum nitride ceramic PCB, the thermal conductivity can reach 140-180 W/m·K. Furthermore, the thermal conductivity of beryllium oxide ceramic PCB can reach up to 300 W/m·K, while the boron nitride ceramic PCB can even reach 600 W/m·K.

In theory, the ceramic circuit boards can work under the temperatures of -50°C-800°C, while in fact, they do better than other circuit boards as expected.

Thanks to LAM technology, the ceramic circuit board can be employed as a high-density interconnect PCB for small-volume electronics. Meanwhile, the ceramic circuit board has a low dielectric constant and dielectric loss, which can provide good high-frequency performance.
In addition, the ceramic PCB also has the advantages of high hardness, high insulation, low impedance, good chemical stability, corrosion resistance, and long life-shell.

Ideally, ceramic circuit boards can be used to replace traditional PC boards. However, in fact, the pricing of the ceramic PCB is more expensive than FR4 PCBs and MCPCBs, so the actual situation should be considered when deciding whether to use ceramic PCB.

As a PCB manufacturer with 26 years of experience, PS Electronics has mature technical advantages and raw material channels. We can customize the ceramic PCB within budgets. Please click the button below to contact our engineers.

The Application of Ceramic Circuit Boards

Ceramic PCBs can be widely used in high voltage, high insulation, high frequency, high temperature, high reliability, and small volume electronic products, including but not limited to the follows:

• Refrigeration Equipment
• High Power Circuits
• High Power LED
• Sensors
• RF Modules
• BMS System
• Power Supply
• Solar Cell System
• Semiconductor Cooler
• Control Modules for Large Mechanical 
• Medical Hub
• Automotive Electronics

...