New achievements in copper foil research and development

Guo Ligong, his appearance was not good when he first saw him, his nose was put on a pair of glasses, and he spoke softly. Such an ordinary researcher of Jiangxi Copper Group, as the name suggests, has made great contributions to the transformation and upgrading of Jiangxi Copper's copper foil products. When Guo Ligong was engaged in electrolytic copper foil manufacturing and technical research, he led the development of cutting-edge products such as 5G copper foil. At the same time, he was responsible for and participated in more than 10 research and development projects, published 4 papers, and obtained 4 authorized patents.

Entered the copper foil industry

Guo Ligong was born in Hunan in January 1983. The grandfather named it "Serve", hoping that he will serve the motherland and build merits when he grows up. Perhaps the name really has the effect of motivating and suggesting, Guo Ligong has a heroic dream of making contributions since he was a child.

In 2005, Guo Ligong graduated from Hunan Metallurgical Vocational and Technical College and came to Jiangxi Copper's Dongtong Mining to engage in machinery manufacturing and design. Three years later, by coincidence, Guo Ligong applied to Jiangxi Copper Foil Co., Ltd., from a mechanical technician to a copper foil production operator.

Copper foil is as thin as a cicada wing and is used in many fields such as mobile phones, electrical appliances, automobiles, base stations, and aerospace. Guo Ligong was very curious about this precision electronic substrate from the beginning. I heard that the copper foil company has a surface treatment production line with extremely sophisticated equipment and very high operating requirements. Guo Ligong said that he likes challenges, even if he is doing operations, he must do the most difficult operations.

As soon as he arrived at his new position, Guo Ligong became "a hundred thousand whys". He asks if he doesn't understand, and asks everybody. Many of these questions are not directly related to the operation of the job. The teachers around him can't stand it one by one, and some complain that he is "nosy." But Guo Ligong believes that those are not "noisy things", but are related to the smooth production of production and the improvement of quality.

The surface of copper foil is required to be smooth and flat. Once particles appear on the surface of the foil, the product quality will be degraded. Once, in order to track down the causes of several fine particles, Guo Ligong went through more than 10 electroplating tanks, more than 20 electroplating sticks, and more than 30 control points. He is like a master detective, tracing the whole night, and finally find out the root of the problem, and propose an optimized solution. His keen perception when discovering problems and his perseverance when solving problems impressed his colleagues.

Copper foil products are electronic substrates, and the products will be updated and iterated every few years. In order to develop new products and improve quality, the copper foil company has continued to produce production experiments for many years, and some experiments are directly completed on the production line.

Productive experiments always bring additional operational tasks, but Guo Ligong regards such additional tasks as additional gains. He has always felt: "R&D personnel are very advanced." He believes that they always have the means to solve the deep-seated problems encountered in production, and even have the ability to develop high-end products from scratch.

At that time, Guo Ligong took a little admiration. After finishing his work every day, he took the initiative to cooperate with the R&D staff, and if he could help, he took the initiative to step forward, but he just kept watching. After 4 years, he has accumulated a lot of field experience in operation positions and learned a set of process principles behind the products.

In October 2012, the copper foil company decided to mobilize backbone forces from the front line to set up a technology research and development department to carry out research on new products. Guo Ligong, who likes challenging work, said: "The opportunity is here."

At that time, the copper foil company in charge of research and development was Xiao Bingrui, an expert in copper foil research and development and manufacturing. One day, Xiao Bingrui was discussing the method of controlling the physical properties of copper foil with a technician. Guo Ligong stood by and listened in silence. At the moment when Xiao Bingrui left, Guo Ligong plucked up his courage, followed quickly, and said loudly, "Mr. Xiao, I want to transfer to the R&D department, do you think it's okay?"

Guo Ligong’s memory is still fresh. At that time, Xiao Bingrui turned around and looked at him for a while, then asked two questions: One is that the R&D work of the copper foil company is very difficult. Can you stick to it? The other is R&D work day and night, can family members support it? "

"No problem!" Guo Ligong answered loudly without even thinking about it.

Enter the high-end market

Copper foil and circuit board are like two sides of a coin. The combination of the two forms a circuit board with various functions, various uses, and various applications.

In recent years, with the development of the electronics industry, environmental protection requirements have become higher and higher. Lead-free and halogen-free copper foil has become the new industry standard. To meet the requirements of lead-free and halogen-free, copper foil products need to have higher heat resistance Sex.

After receiving scientific research tasks, Guo Ligong has been on the front line of production for more than 60 days. He worked hard day and night, the factory became a home, and the home became a hotel. Doing what he likes, Guo Ligong feels that giving is also happy.

After hundreds of trials and more than a year of research, the copper foil company team finally succeeded in making the heat resistance of copper foil meet the requirements of lead-free and halogen-free PCB, and successfully applied the technical results to the production line. As a result, the company's copper foil products have been successfully upgraded.

In the intelligent era, the update of electronic products is close to "Moore's Law", which puts forward new requirements for the iteration and development of copper foil products.

However, high-end products, including high-flex copper foil, have long relied on foreign imports. With the popularization of high-tech electronic products such as folding mobile phones, notebook computers, and smart manufacturing equipment, flexible copper foil has become a big market.

"Break foreign monopolies and occupy the high-end market." In early 2014, Guo Ligong issued a military order to provoke the burden of flexible copper foil research. After fighting hard for more than a month with his colleagues, the research has progressed, and the test products are sent to customers, but the feedback results are not up to the standard.

This made Guo Ligong sleepless. He carefully analyzed the experimental data, re-formed the technical plan, and launched a new round of research. This battle has been another month.

This time, after the test product was taken out, Guo Ligong took the sample and went to the customer's factory to participate in the product test. That day, without a ticket on the train, he bought a station ticket and stood there for six or seven hours.

Hard work pays off. With two rounds of research and two battles, with the efforts of Guo Ligong and others, the copper foil company won the technical high ground of flexible copper foil. The evaluation of "Jiangxi Copper's flexible copper foil performance is comparable to similar products outside the United States" has spread like wildfire in the industry, and batch orders have also followed...

Integration into the 5G industry chain

2020 is the first year of 5G.

5G is an important track for overtaking on high-tech corners and a historical opportunity for the transformation and upgrading of related industrial chains.

As early as 2019, copper foil companies have benchmarked high-end copper foil substrate markets in Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg and Taiwan, China, and deployed high-frequency and high-speed copper foil product research and development in the 5G market. Guo Ligong is the person in charge of a sub-item of 5G copper foil.

5G copper foil requires extremely high product smoothness. According to Guo Ligong's analogy, 5G copper foil is like a highway. The smoother the road, the smoother and more complete the transmission of electronic signals.

"Making the foil surface smoother and making the electroplating deposition particles smaller" is the primary goal of Guo Ligong's team. In order to break through the problem, Guo Ligong consulted industry data, tested foreign products, and looked for breakthrough points in parameters.

After finding the breakthrough point, he repeatedly analyzed the types and quantities of elements added in the solution, as well as the order of addition, adjusted the parameter ratio, observed the color difference of the product, tested the product parameters, and found the best balance among various complicated changes. point.

After numerous failures, Guo Ligong's team finally found a way to make the particles smaller, and the copper foil product reached the expected smoothness.

The months of suffering finally paid off, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Customer feedback has reduced everyone's mood to freezing point-the coupling agent on high-speed copper foil is not suitable for high-speed insulation materials.

The coupling agent is a layer of "glue" sprayed on the foil surface to connect the copper foil and the insulating material. There are hundreds of brands of coupling agents on the market, and it is not easy to find coupling agents suitable for 5G high-speed insulation materials.

"Only work hard." The Guo Ligong team did everything possible to find a variety of coupling agents, according to the permutation and combination of 1, 2, 3, 1 gram, 2 grams, 3 grams, constantly changing the types and quantities of ingredients, and blending them one by one.

During that time, Guo Ligong was not the only one who lived in the laboratory 24 hours a day. Although the work is boring, everyone is passionate, and everyone believes that this is the last step before success.

In order to leapfrog this step, everyone fought fiercely in the laboratory for half a year, conducted countless experiments, and finally successfully formulated a coupling agent that met customer requirements.

The coupling agent sprayed on the copper foil has passed the barrier. I thought that the development of 5G high-speed copper foil could be a success. No one expected that customer feedback said: "The performance of the product will be greatly reduced after half a month of use."

When the news came, everyone was silent and depressed. At this time, Guo Ligong took the initiative to stand up and encourage everyone to say: "To engage in research and development, we must accept failure, not to mention that we have already succeeded in half..."

The battle started again. Guo Ligong led the team to monitor the daily performance indicators during the use of copper foil and find out the changes every day and the reasons behind them. Guo Ligong said that the real effort of research and development, for them, is often a down-to-earth stupid effort.

At the beginning of this year, the epidemic hit. Guo Ligong took this time as a good opportunity for meditation research and development. He gave up holidays and rested, soaking in the production site every day. Due to the lack of time at home, the son who just entered the second grade complained: "Dad will not accompany me, and will not accompany him when I grow up."

Guo Ligong said that he devoted himself to the research and development of copper foil because of the belief in his heart, “Now it is undergoing a major change unseen in a century. In this historical opportunity, the core technology is in his own hands. ."

After repeated defeats and tenacious attacks, Guo Ligong's team finally completed the development of 5G high-speed copper foil in September this year. The assessment conclusion of a top domestic company is that the quality of high-frequency and high-speed copper foil produced by Jiangxi Copper Copper Foil is basically the same as that of similar copper foil in Japan, which can completely replace imports.

There is nothing difficult in the world, as long as you are willing to climb. With the efforts of a large number of R&D personnel and engineering technicians at Jiangxi Copper, including Guo Ligong, Jiangxi Copper's copper foil products have been integrated into the world's IT industry chain and new energy automobile industry chain, and become an important supplier of top domestic innovative companies. Guo Ligong's craftsmanship and innovation spirit have also been recognized. At the Jiangxi Provincial Model Workers and Advanced Workers Commendation Conference on October 12, Liu Qi, Secretary of the Jiangxi Provincial Party Committee, saw Guo Ligong’s introduction and said that Guo Ligong is as his name suggests and hopes that he will make new contributions to Jiangxi Copper and Jiangxi’s economic and social development. .