Cicor’s Thick-film Technology Uses Ceramic Substrates for Reliability in Harsh Environments

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Cicor Group has long been at the forefront of advanced electronic manufacturing, with a strong focus on high-reliability solutions for demanding industries. Among its core capabilities, the company’s thick-film substrate technology stands out as a mature yet continuously evolving platform designed to meet the challenges of extreme environments and precision applications.

Thick-film technology has been used for decades in the production of wiring supports, offering a robust and reliable alternative to conventional PCB solutions. At its core, the process involves screen printing conductive tracks onto a substrate, followed by a high-temperature firing process that permanently bonds the materials.

What sets Cicor’s approach apart is the use of ceramic substrates. These materials provide exceptional thermal conductivity and mechanical stability, enabling circuits to perform reliably even under harsh environmental conditions. Compared to traditional PCBs, thick-film circuitry offers significantly higher temperature resistance and longer service life—making it particularly well-suited for mission-critical applications.

Key Advantages of Thick-Film Substrates

Cicor’s thick-film technology delivers a range of functional and performance benefits:

• Superior thermal management through ceramic substrates with excellent heat conduction properties
• Flexible resistor integration, allowing printed resistors across a wide range—from milliohms to gigaohms
• Precision tuning, with laser trimming enabling exact resistance values
• Post-assembly calibration, ensuring optimal performance even after components are mounted

These capabilities make thick-film substrates ideal for applications where precision, durability, and stability are non-negotiable.

Advancing the Technology Frontier

In recent years, Cicor has made significant investments to further enhance the performance and manufacturability of thick-film technology. These advancements include:

• Development of improved printing pastes, enabling finer line resolution and better matching of thermal expansion properties between materials
• Enhancements in printing screens and stencils, including ultra-fine mesh fabrics for greater precision
• Upgrades to fully automated printing systems with camera-based alignment, as well as curing ovens with tighter temperature control
• Advanced laser systems for ceramic processing and resistor trimming, improving both accuracy and efficiency
• Implementation of photolithographic and laser structuring techniques, reducing line and space widths to approximately 30 µm
• Laser structuring of dielectric layers to achieve via diameters below 100 µm, allowing for more compact and efficient multilayer designs

Together, these innovations enable Cicor to push the boundaries of miniaturization and performance in thick-film substrates.

Enabling High-Reliability Applications

Cicor’s continued development of thick-film technology, combined with the qualification of its production processes for aerospace standards, opens up new possibilities for high-reliability electronics. The technology is particularly well-suited for:

• Aerospace and defense systems
• Specialized power modules
• Advanced sensor technologies

By combining decades of expertise with ongoing innovation, Cicor continues to position thick-film substrates as a critical enabler for next-generation electronic systems operating in the most demanding environments.

Click here to learn more about Cicor’s thick-film technology.