Anyone who picks up a smartphone or tablet nowadays can almost take it for granted that it contains an HDI printed circuit board from AT&S, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of high-quality PCBs for the Mobile Devices sector. AT&S has concentrated the manufacture of these high-tech products at its plant in Shanghai. As far as the monitoring and optimization of the coating process in the acidic copper bath are concerned, wet chemical analytical techniques such as titration and cyclic voltammetric stripping (CVS) play an important role. In this area AT&S in Shanghai relies on systems from Metrohm.

Of the approximately 5000 people employed in the Shanghai plant, about 50 work in the wet chemistry laboratory. They check the steady stream of samples that keep arriving from production at the rate of almost one a minute. The concentration of bath additives such as brighteners and levelers is determined with seven CVS systems from Metrohm. Brighteners and levelers are used to optimize the coating process in the acidic copper bath. To determine numerous other parameters, the laboratory technicians have the latest Metrohm titrators available to them.

Already when one first steps into the large laboratory, one notices the high degree of automation for analysis. To cope with the enormous number of samples, almost all the Metrohm systems are equipped with the appropriate sample changers; these take care of the liquid handling and sample preparation. AT&S has been relying on Metrohm for a number of years now: «Initially, we had one or two Metrohm systems in the lab; now we have more than 20», says Qiang Chen, the laboratory manager. «One could say that the successful development of our lab is reflected in the growing number of Metrohm systems.»

Watch video and learn about Metrohm instruments at AT&S