New materials for speeding up 5G devices, Kyowa Chemical improves performance of electronic substrates

Kyowa chemical industry, a manufacturer of industrial and pharmaceutical materials developed a new material which is essential for quality improvement of telecom equipment adapting a new generation of the 5G network technology.

A higher speed network by increasing frequency of the radio wave could negatively affect the electrical properties of the circuit board, and that results in its lowered quality. However, the new material could solve the critical issue on the circuit board.

The new development from Kyowa is a hollow silica. It is a particle made of silicon dioxide and has hollow structure. The material should be homogeneously dispersed in resins for the circuit board. It seems the material can contribute the board to achieve electrical properties required for the next generation of 5G.

At present, 5G technology is being commercialized for smartphones, and its next generation requires a higher frequency of the radio wave compared to the current version which has 30～300GHz, expecting to have a higher speed network. Although a control of the autonomous driving technology and a remote and live control of robots could be materialized by the higher speed, improvements of the circuit board for telecom equipment have been a challenge.

The circuit board is a layered board by copper board and resins. In the case of the high frequency radio wave, electrical properties of resins called dielectric properties could become too high, that causes a transmission loss and a thermal issue. As a result, the board cannot maintain the high-speed data transmission. This is the reason as to why polyimide and liquid crystal polymers superior for the dielectric properties are selected, but the market is concerned about insufficiency of the property for the new generation of 5G even by single use of the special polymers.

The hollow silica could bring an improvement of the electrical properties, blended into resins, and various companies are trying to outperform competitors in the development of the material. However, most of the companies have relevant products with a big particle as bigger than 10 microns, which cannot fulfil the required electrical properties. There is a case for a smaller size of the material, but it is difficult to homogeneously control the particle size.

Kyowa’s new material has the particle in the range of 1 – 1.9 microns. Besides the particle size is homogeneously controlled. Resins containing the new material achieved the electrical properties required for the next generation of 5G.

Kyowa manufactures plastic additives and Magnesium oxide/Magnesium hydroxide used for medicines such as antacid. It has a technology to make ultrafine particle products, and the technology was applied to the hollow silica. It is expected that the material can be applied even for 6G technology.

The company will aim for mastering the technology so that it can achieve a mass production of the new development. And it will arrange samples of the hollow silica to be evaluated at customers.

The company estimates a market size of materials for the circuit board as around EUR 5 billion in 2022 and assume that the market could double the size in 2025. The market is attractive for the company to make the new development contribute to the company having EUR150 million revenue.