Reactive material jetting of polyimide insulators for complex circuit board design

Zhang, Fan; Saleh, Ehab; Vaithilingam, Jayasheelan; Li, You; Tuck, Christopher; Hague, Richard; Wildman, Ricky; He, Yinfeng

Abstract

Polyimides are a group of high performance thermal stable dielectric materials used in diverse applications. In this article, we synthesized and developed a high-performance polyimide precursor ink for a Material Jetting (MJ) process. The proposed ink formulation was shown to form a uniform and dense polyimide film through reactive MJ utilising real-time thermo-imidisation process. The printed polyimide film showed a permittivity of 3.41 and degradation temperature around 500 °C, both of which are comparable to commercially available polyimide films. Benefiting from the capability of being able to selectively deposit material through MJ, we propose the use of such a formulation to produce complex circuit board structures by the co-printing of conductive silver tracks and polyimide dielectric layers. By means of selectively depositing 4 µm thick patches at the cross-over points of two circuit patterns, a traditional double-sided printed circuit board (PCB) can be printed on one side, providing the user with higher design freedom to achieve a more compact high performance PCB structure.

Citation

Zhang, F., Saleh, E., Vaithilingam, J., Li, Y., Tuck, C., Hague, R., Wildman, R., & He, Y. (2019). Reactive material jetting of polyimide insulators for complex circuit board design. Additive Manufacturing, 25, 477-484. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addma.2018.11.017

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 17, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Nov 22, 2018
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2019
• Deposit Date: Dec 6, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 11, 2018
• Journal: Additive Manufacturing
• Print ISSN: 2214-7810
• Electronic ISSN: 2214-8604
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 25
• Pages: 477-484
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addma.2018.11.017
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1379711
• Publisher URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214860418306262?via%3Dihub
• Contract Date: Dec 6, 2018