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Expertise in Action

We provide an integrated capability to build hardware ranging from quick-turn prototypes to fully qualified spaceflight assemblies and from nanoscales up to fully integrated electronic packages for deployment on land, undersea, and on space systems.

Our experts can partner with your project teams to provide design-for-manufacturing expertise that will enable your hardware to be built faster, more reliably, and with the highest performance possible.

We have the capability to produce a wide range of rigid, rigid-flex, and flexible circuit boards as well as cabling and harness interconnects. We also support forward-leaning exploratory research with capabilities to modify existing packages and integrate new hardware into novel envelopes and designs.

Electrical fabrication

Capabilities

Printed Circuit Board Fabrication

We specialize in dense, mixed-signal, multilayer circuit boards, flex, and rigid-flex, ranging from high reliability to novel prototyping for a variety of APL needs. Our teams continually assess new materials, develop fabrication techniques, and offer creative, collaborative solutions to realize the Lab’s innovative concepts and achieve a wide variety of project deliverables. Our capabilities range from extremely small feature sizes and concealable prototypes to high-layer-count laminated rigid-flex for spaceflight and everything in between.

Electronics Assembly and Hybrid Packaging

We produce and modify a diverse range of sponsor electronics, including circuit card assemblies, cabling, magnetics, and electromechanical subsystems, taking them from back-of-the-napkin prototypes to qualified, fully documented, and traceable spaceflight hardware. To meet environmental requirements, our team utilizes polymerics staking and coating solutions, including parylene. Our hybrid packaging capabilities, such as wirebonding, underfill, and encapsulation, facilitate multi-chip module and device packaging development. Throughout the entire process, we provide established automation equipment and expertise as well as skilled, certified technician hand-assembly, giving APL a unique advantage.

Microelectronics, Nanofabrication, and Advanced Platings

Our micro/nanofabrication expertise, paired with a user-accessible clean room and equipment, provides APL with the means to go from idea to realized innovation in a collaborative and expeditious manner. We also maintain relationships and contracts with regional laboratories such as the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and National Institute of Standards and Technology, enabling access to processes and equipment not available on our main campus. Our diverse capabilities also include device decapsulation/depackaging, advanced platings, lapping and polishing, chemical milling, and metrology.

Electronics Design

Leveraging the collective expertise of our team, we seamlessly integrate your specified requirements into the manufacturing process. Our proficiency in design is comprehensive; whether it’s a substantial or modest project, our team of design engineers is adept at overseeing every facet of the design journey. We collaborate closely with our APL partners or, alternatively, will coordinate with a third-party vendor if outsourcing is needed. Our team offers support throughout all phases of the design process and plays a pivotal role in advancing customer product designs and improvements, ultimately benefiting our clients.

Microelectronics fabrication
Electronics assembly

[Surgeons] had no way to evaluate how well they had positioned [the implant] and if the device was working while they were in surgery. They would have to evaluate after surgery and then do a revision later, which means another surgery. And I’m like, ‘Wow, there has to be a better way than this. Why can’t we use a piece of electric material that gives us stress values and then determine what the frequency is so you can figure out how well the person is hearing while they are on the [operating] table?’

George Coles, Principal Staff Engineer and Master Inventor*
George Coles

*APL’s Master Inventor Award honors staff members who have demonstrated a career of innovation with 10 or more patents based on APL intellectual property.

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