A systems engineer supporting a long-life aerospace and defense program was tasked with delivering electronics capable of surviving extreme environmental exposure. The system would operate under repeated shock and vibration events, wide thermal cycling, vacuum transitions, radiation exposure, humidity excursions, and strict contamination control protocols.
The electrical design met initial performance requirements, but environmental testing began to expose weaknesses in the packaging platform. Over extended qualification cycles, the program encountered instability tied not to the active devices, but to the substrate and interconnect structure supporting them.
Failure mechanisms began to emerge:
Because the program required strict configuration control and long-term traceability, even minor material or process adjustments triggered costly requalification cycles. Schedule risk increased as environmental margin narrowed.
The team realized the issue was not component performance — it was platform stability under stress.
Thin Film Built for Environmental Stability
The program transitioned to a custom thin-film ceramic substrate platform designed specifically for harsh-environment survivability.
Environment-Ready Construction
Stable ceramic substrates — Alumina for electrical stability, AlN where thermal and mechanical demands were higher — replaced organic materials. These ceramics provided low moisture absorption, dimensional stability, and consistent dielectric performance across wide temperature ranges.
Sputtered Thin-Film Metallization
Highly controlled sputtered metallization stacks replaced plated or screen-printed conductors. The uniform metal structure reduced stress concentration, improved adhesion, and maintained electrical integrity through repeated thermal excursions.
Hermetic, Filled-Via Interconnects
Solid gold-filled vias provided:
These vias eliminated porous or mechanically weak interconnect transitions that had previously degraded under environmental cycling.
Qualification-First Execution
Materials, metallization stacks, via structures, and inspection criteria were locked early in the program lifecycle through build-to-print discipline, FAIs, traceability, and controlled change processes — reducing qualification drift and lifecycle risk.
Stable Performance Through Extreme Conditions
After transitioning to thin film:
Environmental margin increased, and lifecycle confidence improved. The system passed environmental qualification and proceeded into sustained production without further platform-driven redesign.
[Engineering Takeaway]
“Failure wasn’t coming from the active devices — it was coming from material instability. Thin film gave us a ceramic, hermetic foundation that stayed stable through shock, thermal cycling, and long qualification programs.”
— Aerospace Systems Reliability Engineer
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Challenge
Our customer was evaluating a solution for power electronics equipment that required the use of several DC-Link capacitors on the same PCB, while ensuring that the devices would support critical vibration profiles. The products being considered for the application had a significantly high mass of around 100 g, and were attached to the PCB via four lead wires with 1.2 mm diameters. While testing these parts under severe vibration profiles, the customer reported broken lead wires. The challenge was clear: how can such high mass parts withstand severe vibration profiles, while maintaining a similar footprint on the PCB?
