Effects of various fillers on CEM-1 laminate punchability

The primary objective of this study is to emphasize the modification of the epoxy resin formulation by implementing falling weight test to discuss reduction of impact energy and apply the thesis to improve the punchability on the CEM-1 copper clad laminate. Experimental results demonstrate that the core structure can be modified with different phenolic resin; when phenolic resin PF-440 of a smaller molecular weight is used as the modified agent, the impact energy can be lowered by 17%. In addition, three kinds of inorganic fillers, such as TiO_2, Al(OH)_3, SiO_2, are added and the core and face structure were modified separately. Adding these fillers has a small effect on lowering the impact energy and no clear evidence of tendency, while the phenolic resin has significant effect. When 10 phr TiO₂ is added to face, the impact energy can be lowered around 60% and has a visible effect on improving the punchability improvement of CEM-1 copper clad laminate. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 101: 3381–3386, 2006