Handbook of Thick Film Technology

Citation

Pitt, K. (2006), "Handbook of Thick Film Technology", Soldering & Surface Mount Technology, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 45-45. https://doi.org/10.1108/ssmt.2006.18.3.45.1

Who said comparisons are insidious? I do not know, although one can but compare this work with the first edition, which was edited by P.J. Holmes and R.G. Loasby. The original book was published some 29 years earlier, so there has been a lot of the proverbial water flowing since then. Because the first edition has been the standard reference work for the subject since its publication, it may be reasonable to expect the new edition to become so for the next decades. I will, therefore, place a little more emphasis on the differences, rather than the merits. Of course, the main differences echo technical advances.

The general chapter layout is practically the same as the old book, with changes, of course, to reflect on new technology. The first chapter is entitled “Development of thick film technology” with the byline of R.G. Loasby and P.J. Holmes (revised K. Pitt). As a guestimate, it is about 60 per cent the original material and 40 per cent “revision”. As the basic notions of thick films remain the same, this is probably a good balance. However, this ratio does not hold good for some of the other chapters. For example, the excellent and authoritative new chapter on “Thermal design aspects” by D.J. Dean (both editions), has “grown” from 30 pages to 76, while “Circuit devices and assembly” by M. Coleman (formerly by H.D. Fisher) has actually shrunk from 59 to 44 pages. This latter reduction inspired me to make a detailed page‐by‐page comparison. What I found was that most of Fisher's text has been reproduced verbatim by Coleman, without any credit to the original author, smacking of plagiarism. A number of figures and tables have been dropped. To be fair, Coleman has updated the chapter with new materials, processes and package types, where appropriate. The crux of this is that this chapter is still technically valid in the modern context, so that readers should not be put off by the fact that most of the wording dates from three decades ago.

One major difference that is notable is that cermet resistor materials were in their infancy when the first edition was published, whereas they are today's mainstream. This is very much reflected in “The structure and composition of thick film resistors” completely rewritten by the editor. Another advance, in “Conductor materials” is that only noble metals were used for conductors in the 1970s, whereas copper has become a workhorse material, especially where cost is a major consideration, in the meanwhile. Naturally, this has become possible only by the development of inert gas firing furnaces.

Technical weaknesses? Yes, I did find one. The section on flux selection and post‐soldering cleaning (less than one‐half page, altogether) left to be desired and is largely insufficient and out‐dated for anyone to make an informed choice of materials, process or environmental safeguards. Worse, there is no warning that the use of saponifiers for flux removal could be detrimental to the quality of the fired frits. Of course, this book is not intended to be a treatise on these subjects, but I consider them to be sufficiently important and universal that they deserve a better treatment of at least a couple of pages. However, there are plenty of specialist books on these subjects for those wishing to delve into them, but that is not the point.

The book is excellently typeset and printed on good paper and well bound, as is usual with electrochemical's publications. The indexing is, on the whole, adequate but not perfect. For example, there are at least three sections in the book with references to cleaning, but the index does not show the word. There is also a first‐rate authors' index to provide easy referral to the numerous references at the end of each chapter.

So, yes, the second edition is a worthy successor to the first one and merits the sobriquet of the new “bible” on thick film circuitry.