5G Brings New Demand 3M Hollow Glass Ball Material Enters PCB Application in A Large Scale

In order to meet the requirements of 5G high frequency and high-speed communication, the circuit board materials need to have better high-frequency characteristics and lower signal loss, and the weight should be more light, and the cost should not be too high. To meet the market demand, 3M launched a new generation of insulating glass ball materials. The material is characterized by lightweight, low signal loss, and low cost. It is a high-frequency high speed (HSHF) resin filler with excellent performance and low dielectric constant.

Originally widely used in consumer products and packaging materials, hollow glass beads have gained great success in PCB and CCL market used in 5G equipment due to their excellent high-frequency characteristics, low cost, and lightweight characteristics.

3M insulating glass ball series products have been born for more than half a century, its high-quality characteristics are widely used in consumer products, electronic products, packaging, sporting goods, and so on. But Brian Meyer, president of 3M's Advanced Materials division, says the company has never been limited by the way a material is used, and the innovative use of hollow glass spheres is a good example. As a resin filler, the new insulating glass sphere material can significantly improve the transmission speed of high-frequency signals and reduce the loss of signal transmission. These properties fit the needs of 5G communications so well that the material is already being adopted by 5G copper foil substrate (CCL) and printed circuit board manufacturers around the world.

Andrew D 'Souza, manager of 3M's global glass microsphere laboratory, said 3M's hollow glass spheres are currently available in the 6GHz signal band, but that 3M is moving forward with plans to move its hollow glass spheres into the millimeter-wave band.

Yin Guozhong, general manager of 3M Taiwan Automotive and electronics business Group, said that 3M insulating glass balls in addition to the traditional weight reduction, heat insulation applications, in recent years, also developed new products for 5G heat dissipation applications. In order to accelerate the 5G infrastructure construction in Taiwan, we are also cooperating with CCL manufacturers in Taiwan, and have successfully developed heat dissipation products that meet the requirements of 5G transmission. We look forward to using science and technology to improve lives and bring more benefits and possibilities for 5G development and infrastructure construction.

The characteristics of lightweight, low signal loss, and low cost of hollow glass balls can just solve the challenges faced by the popularization of 5G applications. To achieve better network coverage and lower signal latency,5G networks need to use lots of tiny base stations. Therefore, even the base equipment, the size and weight of the product also have high requirements, light, small particle size filler, become the choice of micro base station erection material new indicators. 3M hollow glass spheres are lightweight and can be about 20 times larger than traditional solid mineral fillers of the same weight. In terms of cost per unit volume,3M hollow glass spheres have the ability to reduce costs and increase performance in many applications. Its unique lightweight characteristics, assist copper foil substrate designers to create smooth, lightweight 5G copper foil substrate, and then the output of 5G wireless communication used printed circuit boards; In addition, 3M hollow glass balls are also included in the manufacturing process of 5G related communication products, such as base station components, radome, and even mobile phone shells.

How to overcome the signal loss and interference of high-frequency communication has always been an important challenge in PCB production, and this problem is more obvious due to the higher signal frequency of 5G. 3M hollow glass ball as resin filler, is conducive to engineers to accurately grasp the conductive characteristics of copper foil substrate, reduce transmission loss under high-frequency signals, and greatly improve the reliability of communication transmission. Among the existing materials, 3M hollow glass spheres are one of the fillers with the lowest dielectric constant.