Korean Supply Chain Intel

A major Korean foundry's Pyeongtaek Line 4 delay. Equipment installation is running 6–8 weeks behind schedule on ASML EUV tool delivery constraints — itself partly a downstream effect of the helium and logistics environment. Commissioning slips to Q3, capping incremental HBM4 capacity. SK hynix gains a temporary share advantage.
LG Energy Solution Michigan expansion. The battery-plant expansion will pull Korean power electronics, including board-level EMI shielding for BMS modules. Expect country-of-origin audits as the 25% tariff regime matures.
Hyundai Mobis ADAS center. A new Seoul R&D facility with 500 engineers is developing L3+ autonomous systems. These require CISPR 25 Class 5-qualified board-level shielding — the most stringent automotive emissions class — creating a new structural demand pool for high-performance shields.

Price Watch: Metals

The nickel story is a shielding story. Indonesia's parliament (Commission VII) has advanced an export-tax bill of 10–15% on processed nickel. Indonesia controls roughly 50% of global nickel processing, so this tax sets a new cost floor for every nickel-bearing alloy in electronics:

A 10–15% tax on a metal that is already up 10.7% month-over-month compounds. Mu-metal, at ~80% nickel, is the most exposed shielding material on the board.

⚠️Procurement action

Teams specifying nickel-silver or mu-metal shields should obtain alternate tin-plated cold-rolled steel quotes before Indonesia's final vote. Once the tax is law, you negotiate from a weaker position. Tin-plated CRS gives excellent electric-field shielding effectiveness for most board-level applications; reserve mu-metal for genuine low-frequency magnetic shielding, where it is irreplaceable.

Design Corner: Via Stitching and the Leaky Faraday Cage

A shield can plus the PCB ground plane form a Faraday cage only if the cage is electrically continuous. The continuity is provided by the ground vias that tie the can's solder pads to internal ground planes. Any gap in that stitching is a slot antenna.

A slot radiates efficiently when its length approaches λ/2. To keep a stitched fence well below radiating dimensions, the standard rule is via spacing ≤ λ/20 at the highest frequency of concern:

3 GHz → λ = 100 mm → max spacing 5 mm
6 GHz → λ = 50 mm → max spacing 2.5 mm

At λ/20, the residual slot leakage is on the order of 20+ dB below an unstitched gap — the cage holds.

But correct spacing is not sufficient. The most common failure is a layout where the ground vias are correctly placed yet the copper pour on the pad layer does not connect to them with continuous metal, or where thermal-relief spokes are auto-applied to the shield-can solder pads. A thermal relief replaces a solid pad-to-pour connection with four thin spokes and gaps. Those gaps — often just 0.2–0.4 mm — are exactly the slot apertures you were trying to eliminate.

Rules:

Via spacing ≤ λ/20 at f_max.
Overlap the ground pour onto the shield-pad layer by ≥ 0.3 mm of solid copper.
No thermal reliefs on shield-can ground pads. Use solid connections; accept the slightly harder solder process. If reflow voiding is a concern, address it with stencil aperture design, not thermal reliefs.

Bench Note

A customer's board had textbook via spacing — 2.5 mm, valid to 6 GHz. It still failed 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi immunity. The cause: the CAD tool had auto-applied thermal-relief patterns to the shield-can pads, leaving 0.2 mm gaps between pad and pour at every via. Each gap was a small slot resonant in the low-GHz range. Removing the thermal reliefs and connecting pads with solid copper resolved the failure — zero BOM impact, a CAD setting change only.

One Thing

Indonesia controls 50% of global nickel processing. One export tax changes the cost basis for every nickel-bearing alloy in electronics — and for the mu-metal shield, which is 80% nickel, it changes it the most.

— Mike Kwak, POCONS USA