The trend of continuous efforts to achieve a higher degree of integration while maintaining overall
reliability of military, aerospace and commercial systems resulted in higher power and current densities
at chip levels. Hybridization became a major factor in the acceleration of this trend. Designers of
hybrid circuits are faced with increasing demands to create unique custom and off-the-shelf standard
high power hybrid functions, which cannot be achieved by using any other packaging approach. High
current and power densities require special consideration related to die size, total chip power,
maximum junction temperature, as well as methods of layout, packaging and mounting, thermal
characteristics of materials, and type of external cooling.
This handbook concentrates on a variety of design and manufacturing techniques and materials used in
high reliability military and commercial power hybrids, and is an attempt to distill my experience into a
conveniently compact, readable, and yet authoritative reference. It was developed to provide a handson
approach to learning the necessary tools and techniques to those who wish to understand the theory
and practice of hybrid microelectronics. Some of it is addressed to the engineer who has had little
experience with hybrid microelectronics, and to the advanced engineering student. Other parts of the
text are intended for engineering managers, systems designers and hybrid development engineers.