Ceramic vs. Glass Packages

HCC Industries manufactures microcircuit packages which are containers for thick and thin film substrates onto which hybrid circuitry (populated or not) has been etched; protects delicate circuitry against environmental conditions and provides thermal solutions such as heat sinks.

HCC Industries offers both glass-to-metal seal and ceramic-to-metal seal technology to its customers. Depending on the application, weight, thermal solution and material requirements, HCC can help you design a package using one of these technologies to best meet your requirements.

Glass-to-Metal Seal Packages

Traditional glass-to-metal seal packages include:

Ceramic-to-Metal Packages, including Power Surface Mounts

HCC Industries offers ceramic-to-metal packages as well, including the use of ceramic feedthrus, power surface mount technology and high temperature cofired ceramic technology.

For our surface mount technology, HCC Aegis developed and patented a true power surface mountable device. This design is a very low thermally resistive, highly efficient, small, hermetic, surface mountable package.

High Temperature Cofired Ceramic Packages

After purchasing the cofired ceramics product line from Hewlett Packard Corporation in 1980, General Ceramics, an HCC Industries division, has advanced the ceramic industry by introducing the latest high temperature cofired ceramic packages, which are ceramic feedthroughs in fiber optic package designs that previously used only glass to metal seal technology.

Ceramic packages exceed the design barriers of glass to metal seal packages. Our “tape” doctor blade process is used to produce ceramic wafers, starting from ceramic powders blended in-house. High conductivity thick film metallization inks are also custom blended using tungsten and molymanganese. Our technology is capable of providing multiple ceramic layers in a variety of thicknesses. Designs using up to 74 layers have been produced; however, a practical upper limit is 25. The layer process uses high pressure and heat to laminate the tape layers prior to "cofiring" the metallization and ceramic at temperatures in excess of 1500 degrees Celsius. The result is a strong, monolithic high temperature cofired ceramic structure.

Some of the benefits discovered from use of high temperature cofired ceramic packages include:

A more robust hermetic seal for higher assembly yield.
A coplanar wirebond surface for “automatic” wirebonding.
Cofired ceramic packages allow higher lead pull strength for improved assembly yield, and higher lead density, allowing lead spacing as low as 0.020 inch centerline (versus 0.050 inch for glass seal technology).
Due to a need for high vacuum integrity and miniaturization of I/O terminals, infrared applications have found a need for MLC Inserts to support new second generation night vision, seeker and fire-control systems. A similar design approach has also been qualified for phased array radar MMIC modules.
Ceramic packages and ceramic feedthroughs designed for 25 and 50 ohm controlled impedance signals up to 20 GHz are possible.

HCC is the largest and most technologically advanced provider with the broadest range of products and design services.

Learn more about high temperature cofired ceramics.