Cost Breakdown: What Drives Quotes For Hermetic Electronic Packaging

Hermetic electronic packaging keeps moisture and contaminants out of critical assemblies for aerospace, medical, defense, energy, and telecom applications. Quotes vary widely because many cost drivers hide behind material choices, process flows, and assurance requirements. Here’s how suppliers actually build your price.

Materials: alloys, ceramics, platings, and windows

Raw material selection often dominates the bill. Kovar (Fe–Ni–Co) and titanium improve CTE matching but cost more than stainless or aluminum. High-purity alumina ceramics, glass preforms, and metallization inks add further premium.

Precious-metal platings (Au, Pt, Pd) used for wirebonding or corrosion control are priced by thickness and area; adding 5–10 µm of gold across a large lid or seal ring can swing the quote materially. Optional pieces like sapphire windows, RF filters, and getters meaningfully shift materials cost.

What to watch: pick standard alloys and plating stacks; use the thinnest plating that still meets wirebond, solderability, and corrosion requirements; confirm whether optical windows or EMI filters are truly necessary in every variant.

Process and Cycle Time

Different hermetic sealing methods carry different cycle times, yields, and skill requirements:

GTMS: strong and stable, but require furnace cycles and precision fixtures.

Brazing (AuGe, AuSn, AgCu): excellent hermeticity; alloy cost and thermal profiles matter; rework is limited.

Seam welding/projection welding: fast and scalable for metal lids; fixturing and lid geometry drive throughput.

Laser welding: precise, lower heat input, great for localized joins and hybrids; capital cost and programming time apply.

Geometry, Footprint, and Feedthrough Density

Package size, wall thickness, and cavity count affect both material usage and fixture complexity. High-pin-count feedthroughs, fine pitch, or mixed signal/power layouts require tighter drilling, metallization, and inspection. Complex lid shapes (stepped, domed, or windowed) and tight flatness or parallelism tolerances reduce yield and raise machining and grinding costs.

Tooling and NRE (non-recurring engineering)

First articles are rarely free. Expect charges for:

• Custom fixtures for brazing, welding, or handling

• Masks/screens for metallization and plating keep-outs

• Inspection gauges, leak test nests, and laser programs

• DFM/thermal modeling, traveler creation, and control plans

• First Article Inspection (FAI), PPAP-like submissions, or medical device documentation

Volume, Lot Size, and Learning Curve

Hermetic packaging is batch-oriented. Setup time is significant, and yields climb as the team dials in your recipe. Quotes for ten pieces will look very different from quotes for one thousand, even with identical drawings. Committing to regular releases or blanket orders improves machine loading and scrap absorption.

Integration Content: Getters, Filters, Lids, and Labels

Moisture control steps (vacuum bakeouts, activated getters), EMI filters, hermetic connectors, and serialized labels add both material and process touches. Lids with anti-reflection coatings, laser marking, or preforms pre-tacked to simplify assembly add convenience but show up as line items in the quote.

Leanliness, Moisture Control, and Test Depth

Hermetic value comes from proven dryness and leak integrity, not just the seam. Costs rise with:

• Cleanliness class: higher cleanroom classes mean slower, more controlled flows.

• Bakeout strategy: extended vacuum/temperature soaks increase cycle time.

• Helium leak testing: gross and fine leak with tight reject limits (e.g., 10⁻⁹ atm-cc/s) require more sensitive instruments, longer dwell, and correlation runs.

• Residual Gas Analysis (RGA): adds equipment time and specialist review.

• Dew-point verification and long-term moisture modeling: more analysis, more cost.

Reliability Screening and Compliance

Sectors like space, avionics, and implants drive quotes upward via screening plans: temperature cycling, burn-in, shock, vibration, internal visual, bond pull/shear, solderability, X-ray, and destructive physical analysis. Lot traceability, traveler signatures, certificates of conformity, and retention samples add non-product overhead that must be priced in. If you require alignment with specific military, aerospace, or medical quality flows, expect a premium.

Lead Time and Expedite Pressure

Capex-intensive equipment (high-vac furnaces, helium mass spectrometers, precision lasers) runs on tightly scheduled shifts. When you need parts faster than the standard takt, the factory must re-sequence, split lots, or run overtime—each step carrying an expedite multiplier.

Yield, Rework, and Scrap Assumptions

Quotes quietly embed risk for rework and scrap, especially on new designs. Factors include ceramic cracking, braze voids, warpage, plating blisters, window haze, or pinhole leaks. Designs with wide process windows and robust DFM reduce the risk buffer a supplier builds into unit pricing.

Supply-chain, Compliance, and Country-of-origin

Requests for domestic melts, DFARS-compliant materials, conflict-minerals reporting, or ITAR/EAR workflows narrow the vendor base and extend lead times, affecting both material cost and administrative overhead. Some alloys and ceramics have long, variable lead times; carrying safety stock or supplier-held inventory adds a carrying-cost component.

A Typical Cost Distribution (Illustrative)

These ranges shift with part size, pin count, optical features, and sector-specific screening.

How to reduce your quote without compromising reliability

• Engage early on DFM: Share thermal budgets, bonding methods, and acceptable leak limits so the supplier picks the most economical seal process.

• Standardize materials and platings: Align on a default alloy, ceramic grade, and gold thickness that works across variants; avoid one-off stacks.

• Right-size the test plan: Set leak limits and RGA requirements to the actual environment and mission duration; add screening only where it affects field failure modes.

• Simplify geometry and feeds: Relax non-critical tolerances, minimize odd lid shapes, and rationalize feedthrough counts and pitches.

• Amortize NRE with volume: Use blanket orders, multi-release schedules, or multi-cavity fixtures to spread setup and fixture costs.

• Freeze drawings decisively: Each ECO ripples through fixtures, programs, and travelers; avoid late changes after process qualification.

• Choose scalable seals: Where feasible, prefer seam-weldable lids or repetitive laser seams that run faster at production scale.

• Clarify cleanliness needs: Specify the minimum cleanroom class and packaging (dry-pack, nitrogen backfill) that truly protects the product.

• Plan realistic lead times: Avoid expedites; align builds with furnace campaigns and plating schedules to capture better slotting.

• Ask for a costed BOM and routing: Transparency on material thicknesses, preform counts, and test steps helps you target savings surgically.