Victor Hemingway, President, Royal Flex Circuits

As we move into 2021, producing distortion-free high frequency signals - particularly as they apply to sensors and PCBs used in automotive electronics and telecommunications - is our preeminent focus. There's no doubt that HF capability, combined with extremely high reliability, is what will be required. This has been at the core of our planning for a decade, and a prime driver of our development work with advanced nickel-free systems, including EPIG, EPAG and IGEPIG / IGEPAG premium gold surface finishes.

I predict that nickel-free surface finishes like EPIG will have a breakout year in 2021. Uyemura's EPIG is our fastest growing product line, growing beyond forecasts in 2020, with the roster of part numbers specifying it increasing in tandem. The growth came from diagnostic medical devices, automotive, and telecom, where EPIG’s cleaner signal integrity and faster signal speeds deliver important advantages.

The medical devices industry requires surfaces with high purity and low porosity and benefits greatly when nickel is replaced with palladium. Regarding automotive interest, autonomous vehicles are now just 2 years away. Lightning-fast vehicle-to-vehicle communication for GPS and safety sensors will be critical for trucks, cars, taxis, buses and tractor-trailers, with operating frequencies above 50 GHz being the norm.

End user companies are positioning themselves to compete in the self-driving vehicle market, with early adopters testing Uyemura EPIG since 2017. Telecoms, satellite and cell phone manufacturers have been testing nickel-free final finishes for 2-5 years. Our expectation is that several PCB market segments will convert new-generation part numbers to nickel-free final finishes in 2021.