Isolating Electrically Open Laminate Defects Using Space Domain Reflectometry with a Superconducting Quantum Interference Device

An electrically open defect on a laminate may not always be found timely or successfully due to the lack of fault isolation techniques for this type of defect. This is partly due to needing high frequency techniques to isolate the location of the open. Magnetic field imaging (MFI) using a Superconducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUID) is a technique that maps, in this case, an RF signal through a trace, up until the open defect boundary. Several obstacles are introduced when using an RF signal, one of which is the shielding of the signal from the external world. Despite this obstacle, analysis of an open in an arbitrary location along a laminate under a copper plane is proven successful using this technique.