Engineering breakthroughs

Beyond aggressive electrical targets and a one-month schedule, the project required solving multiple high-risk design and process problems in parallel. Toward had to rapidly develop bare-die attach and soldering processes with tight workmanship controls to ensure repeatability under high-current pulses. The team also had to manage severe localized heating during 120 A / 1 ms surges, mitigating risks like joint fatigue, micro-cracking, and de-soldering through thermal modeling and joint/pad optimization. Because pulse currents can create temperature gradients that introduce thermal EMF offsets, the design had to protect low-level measurement integrity by minimizing die-to-substrate distance and refining interface materials. The customer also demanded ultra-low inductance for pulse fidelity—leading to inductance-reduction measures that resulted in the component measuring near “0” inductance, with the customer’s PCB routing becoming the dominant inductive element. Finally, as an SMD module, the solution had to survive reflow soldering without deformation or performance drift, requiring a new packaging approach engineered for reflow robustness while still meeting delivery and cost constraints.