Visual modelling of physical processes

The development of information technology has also opened new perspectives in modeling and simulation of processes used in electronics packaging technology. In September of 1999 an IEEE/NSF supported Project has been launched for the creation of a virtual laboratory (http://www.ett.bme.hu/vlab or http://www.ewh.ieee.org/mm/cpmt/vlab) environment to present and study equipment, and to promote process modeling and simulation developments. An important additional goal of the project is to support electronics packaging education in order to prepare engineers for the needs of the 21st century. The current phase of the work is the development of simulations and models for laser processing, such as via drilling and patterning of pure and metal finished copper layers on polymeric substrates, e.g. epoxy, polyimide and aramid, which are commonly used for laminated interconnect substrates (Lerner, 1998). The paper describes the virtualized facility of the author´s Department and the results of physical model creation efforts and 3D visualization tool developments for laser processing with the application of CO₂ and frequency multiplied Nd:YAG lasers, using all five wavelengths, i.e. 10600, 1064, 532, 355 and 266 nm