Embedded Passive Components in Printed Circuit Boards

Northrop Grumman Corporation Engineering, 2010-11

Liaison(s): Todd Uramoto, Richard Card
Advisor(s): Joseph King
Students(s): Ian Jimenez (TL), Scott Almond, Rebecca Glick, Madeleine Ong, Kristen Warren (S)

The Harvey Mudd College Northrop Grumman Clinic Team will design and test printed circuit boards (PCBs) with embedded resistors and capacitors to evaluate the technology for avionics applications. While thermal cycling the PCBs in a Thermotron environmental test chamber, a data acquisition system will be used to determine the impedance variation over temperature and time. The results from these tests will be analyzed to form a model of the life expectancy of embedded components in PCBs.