Halogen free materials have become a focus in the PCB industry in the last few years. Many materials have been developed and tested and more are appearing all of the time.
Halogen free materials are attractive not only because of their being "green material" but also because of some of their chairacteristics. Typically halogen free materials have a lower dielectric loss than many other materials. This gives them an advantage in applications where high speed signals are used. They do have one draw back however, they are typically more expensive than FR-4 materials.
One of the problems the industry has been faced with is the multitude of test methodologies used to measure dielectric loss and dielectric constant. The test methodology difficulity is the same for non halogen free and halogen materials.
HDP User Group has run several projects evaluating standard FR-4 material, halogen free material, and lead free material. This project is a continuation of that work. We will use loW loss non-halogen free material and halogen free material in our testing. The purpose of the project however is not to publish another material evaluation, the purpose is to evaluate and characterize the test procedures.
Note: The term “halogen-free” used herein refers to bromine or brominated compounds not being used in the resin formulation (i.e. not added to provide flame retardant properties to the finished laminate material).
