Metallic Coatings on Glass Substrates

Glass is a versatile and promising new substrate with advantages suitable for many applications. Glass is stable material that is flat and smooth with a distortion free surface. Not only a great insulator, compared to ceramic and silicon substrates, it also has lower warpage, low electrical loss, and is resistance to temperature changes.

It’s emerging as a popular substrate for advance electronic packaging such as interposers, RDL, and TGV as well as RF communications, and optical and imaging sensors. For semiconductor industry, new solutions and improvements must be made to processes such as glass handling, via/metallization to fully adopt fully adopt glass substrates. Inspection of glass can provide a challenge as well due to it’s transparency and high reflective surface.

X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) allows for a quick and reliable method to accurately measure the thickness and composition of metal depositions on glass substrates. All of Bowman's XRF systems are equipped with Silicon Drift Detectors (SDDs) capable of measuring multilayer thin films. Additionally, XRF is non-destructive and has minimal sample preparation time, especially in comparison to methods such as cross-sectioning and SEM. Combine with optional system automation, XRF can in fully integrated into current production lines.

Read our coatings over glass application note to learn more about the application performance.