AlN ceramic PCB

Traditional high-power IC packaging substrates mainly adopt aluminum oxide and beryllium oxide ceramic materials. Beryllium oxide (BeO) boasts outstanding overall thermal and electrical performance, yet its large-scale promotion is restricted by excessive manufacturing costs and inherent toxic characteristics. In contrast, alumina (Al₂O₃) substrates suffer from low thermal conductivity and mismatched coefficient of thermal expansion with silicon chips, failing to balance performance, cost and environmental protection demands for modern high-power electronic equipment. Maxipcb customized aluminum nitride ceramic PCBs effectively address the bottlenecks of conventional ceramic substrate materials.

Aluminum nitride (AlN) is a high-performance advanced ceramic material that has gained widespread attention in the industry. With high thermal conductivity, low dielectric constant, low dielectric loss and superior electrical insulation, it features a thermal expansion coefficient well compatible with silicon materials while maintaining non-toxic and eco-friendly properties. These comprehensive merits make AlN an ideal substrate solution for high-density, high-power and high-speed integrated circuit packaging.

High thermal conductivity stands out as the most core advantage of aluminum nitride ceramics. Heat conduction inside AlN is realized through lattice vibration and lattice wave transmission, categorized as phonon heat conduction for insulating ceramic materials, where phonons serve as the key medium for heat transfer.

In theoretical calculation, the thermal conductivity of high-purity AlN can reach 320W/(m·K). In actual industrial fabrication, raw material impurities and internal lattice defects will restrict practical heat conduction efficiency. Common impurities in AlN powder include oxygen, carbon and trace metal ions, which induce lattice structural defects and cause phonon scattering, thereby reducing the overall thermal conductivity. Even with such limitations, AlN ceramic PCBs still deliver leading heat dissipation performance among mainstream commercial ceramic substrate products.