What’s DBC (Direct Bonded Copper) in Ceramic PCB?

 

DBC (Direct Bonded Copper) is a process in which copper and a ceramic substrate are directly bonded. DBC ceramic substrates have been proven for many years as an excellent solution for electrical isolation and thermal management of high power semiconductor modules. DBC ceramic substrate can also be the base material of Ceramic PCBs, but was replaced by the newest DPC (Direct Plated Copper) process. Because DPC has better electrical, thermal and mechanical performance.

 

  1. Compared to DBC, DPC provides a very strong bond strength between the Al2O3/AlN substrate and the copper metal, due to the use of a thin film bonding layer.
  2. DPC also has a good ability in thickness control for the copper layer, from very thin to very thick.
  3. For fine pitch design, a minimum conductor line width/spacing of 3 mils can be easily obtained, and via holes are filled with copper for good electrical and thermal characteristics.
  4. By using the proposed DPC substrate, superior performance can be obtained compared to other technologies in terms of its features and applications, which includes high circuit density, outstanding high-frequency characteristics, excellent thermal management and heat-transfer performance, outstanding solderability, and wire-bonding assembly characteristics.

 

This Direct Bond Copper process is a widely acceptable and a time proven technology for power electronic products due to its high thermal conductivity, high current capacity and heat dissipation of the high-purity copper on ceramic. By varying copper and ceramic thickness and ceramic type one can affect a resulting CTE value of total system to avoid a CTE mismatch with different semiconductor devices. The addition of optional dimple features incorporated into your design greatly increases thermal cycling reliability by reducing thermally induced stress and effectively increasing reliability after thermal cycling. But MADPCB now not offers Direct Bond Copper (DBC) ceramic printed circuit boards (PCBs), but offers with DPC process.