Press release

Presteigne, UK
23rd May 2002

US SHOWCASE BECKONS AS LABTECH ANNOUNCES EXPANSION OF MULTILAYER CAPABILITY

Labtech, a world-leader in advanced microwave circuit processing technology, has announced further developments at its Welsh border headquarters as it prepares for a major international show in the United States next month.

Following a successful show at RF and Hyper Europe in Paris in March, the innovative Presteigne company is looking forward to the MTT-S show in Seattle, USA from June 4-6, where it will be exhibiting on Stand No 332.

Having won the Queen's Award for Enterprise and invested .09 million in production equipment that trebled plating capacity last year, Labtech has started 2002 strongly. The company has announced plans this summer to expand the mixed dielectric multilayer capability at its state-of-the-art headquarters.

The growth in PTFE and mixed dielectric multilayers is increasing, with strong demand from Phased Array Radars, Automotive Intelligent Cruise Controls, WLAN, HiperLAN, power amplifiers and components for the emerging 2.5G and 3G base station market.

With a wealth of experience of PTFE multilayers, Labtech is meeting the challenge from many new markets. The company can use a wide range of PTFE glass reinforced grades with dielectric and matched bond films with a range of temperatures (125ºC - 320ºC).

Fusion bonded PTFE multilayers are also catered for where a construction must be controlled to achieve consistent performance.

Mixed dielectric technology is the fastest growing multilayer requirement where combinations of a PTFE, microstrip layer and ground plane are bonded onto FR4 or polyimide layers. These provide the DC interconnect route for the surface mount components mounted on the reverse of the board. The circuits can be bonded with conventional FR4 pre-pregs.

Visitors to the Seattle show will also hear about Labtech's new ‘Turnkey-MIC outsourcing' service, which has been launched to address the growing market demand for assembled high frequency MIC substrates and components.

The company, part of the Intelek Group, has developed and combined its portfolio of precision microwave PCB and MMIC packaging capabilities into a turnkey package that starts with a ‘Design For Manufacturing' approach.

Taking customer circuit designs, the company will develop an optimised tooling package suited for economic volume substrate production. Circuits are then assembled on-site in a newly established Class 10,000 MIC clean room.

Labtech has also secured funding from the European Union's Information Society Technologies programme as part of a three million euros project to find a way of making cheaper broadband (Multi-media Internet) communications devices.

Together with five partners - Alcatel Wireless Transmission Division in Italy, Thales Microwave, TMI (formerly Sorep), TNO Physics and Electronics Laboratory and UMS — the company is developing special low cost microwave chip packaging techniques suitable for the devices.

For more details about Labtech's plans for the shows, please contact the company on +44 (0) 1544 26 00 93

Products Available

• Metalbacked PCBs
• Precision s/sided & d/sided softboard PTFE PCBs
• Multilayer Circuit Boards (PCBs)
• DLVAs
• PIN diode switches
• Multioctave broadband amplifiers
• TDM modules
• Active & passive microwave components
• Microwave thin film circuit manufacture
• RF machining & box build assembly