Advanced Chip & Circuit Materials introduces Celeritas SF1600 laminate targeting fiber weave skew in high-speed designs

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Advanced Chip & Circuit Materials, Inc. (ACCM) in San Jose, Calif., has introduced Celeritas SF1600, a laminate and prepreg material designed to eliminate fiber weave skew in high-speed printed circuit board (PCB) and advanced packaging applications.

The company said the material addresses a long-standing signal integrity limitation in woven-glass laminates, where differential pairs experience timing variation as they traverse alternating resin-rich and glass-rich regions. At data rates of 224 Gbps PAM4 and beyond, ACCM said traditional mitigation methods such as routing adjustments and trace-length compensation are no longer sufficient.

ACCM said Celeritas SF1600 removes the root cause of skew through a redesigned resin and reinforcement system intended to deliver uniform dielectric properties across the signal path, eliminating the periodic dielectric variation associated with conventional glass weave structures.

The material is specified with a dielectric constant (Dk) of 2.80 and dissipation factor (Df) of 0.0007, with stability across frequency up to 110 GHz and over temperature and moisture conditions. ACCM reported measured insertion loss of approximately 1.05 dB per inch at 56 GHz on 7-mil differential pairs using HVLP4 copper, with projected performance of approximately 0.95 dB per inch using HVLP5 copper.

The company also said the material is compatible with standard FR-4 manufacturing processes, including conventional CO2 and UV laser drilling as well as mechanical drilling, without requiring specialized handling, storage, or processing infrastructure. ACCM said the material demonstrates clean via formation with no fiber pull-out or residue under production-representative conditions.

Thermal and mechanical properties include a glass transition temperature of approximately 215°C and thermal decomposition above 400°C. The material is rated for multiple 260°C reflow cycles and is designed for stacked microvia reliability, which the company said has been validated through extended thermal cycling tests.

ACCM highlighted copper adhesion performance as a key differentiator, stating peel strength exceeds 5 pounds per inch on HVLP4 copper, compared with approximately 2 pounds per inch reported for some quartz-based dielectric systems. The company said the material is also compatible with HVLP5 copper foil.

The company positioned the product against quartz-reinforced laminate systems commonly used in ultra-low-loss applications. ACCM said these materials can pose manufacturing challenges, including laser-drilling complications from material mismatch, reduced copper adhesion, and constraints on signal routing density due to fiber-resonance mitigation requirements.

ACCM said those trade-offs become more pronounced at higher data rates, where design margins are increasingly constrained by insertion loss and signal-integrity effects such as skew and resonance.

The company also emphasized that bit error rate failures associated with high-speed signal degradation may not present visible physical defects at the board level, complicating root-cause identification during qualification and production testing.

ACCM said Celeritas SF1600 is intended to provide a materials-level solution for next-generation high-speed digital systems, including artificial intelligence accelerators, advanced networking hardware, and high-performance semiconductor packaging.

For more information, please visit https://adv-ccm.com/.