An Introduction to Flexible Printed Circuit Boards

An Introduction to Flexible Printed Circuit Boards

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Keywords: Flexible PCB Manufacturer

The development miniaturization and multiple functions of electronic products will surely force the technology of PCB manufacturing progress to high density, high accuracy, miniaturization and high speed. Flexible PCB Manufacturer usage has been on the rise in the recent past due to the increased flexibility of the product. In addition to the steady enhancement on flex PCBs manufacturing technology, there are advanced types of PCBs including flex-rigid PCB and HDI flexible PCB that are being developed at high rate on their fabrication technology.

Freedom of Design: The design of the flexible circuit boards covers the multilayer designs also in addition to the two layers. This lends a lot of design flexibility to designers. Basically, the flexible PCBs can be developed in single-sided design with a single point of access and single-sided design with dual point of access and/or multilayer and using combination of rigid and flexible circuits. This flexibility in the block diagram arrangement of functional blocks makes it ideal for use in configurations with many interconnections. The flexible circuit boards can be accommodated with both plated through-hole as well as surface mounting components.

High Density Configurations Possible: Flexible printed circuit boards can accommodate both -plated through-hole and surface mounted components. This combination assists in addressing high density devices with minuscule narrow gap in between the units. As a result, denser and lighter conductors may be developed and more space is created for other components.

Flexibility: The flexible circuits can interact with other planes during the executing of the circuits. This assist in minimizing the weight and space problems of which rigid circuit boards are always a subject. It can always be bent to any degree during the installation without any concern as to whether or not there will be failure.

High Heat Dissipation: Due to the miniaturization of the designs, and increased device densities, these thermal paths are formed to be shorter. This assists in removing the heat more than it will in a formation of a rigid circuit. Further, flexible circuits provide thermal dissipation on two sides only.

Improved Air Flow: Clearer styling of flexible circuits means they can dissipate heat more effectively and improves the air flow. This is because thermo plated circuits have a lesser amount of heat resistant thermals than their rigid printed circuit board counterparts. The enhanced flow also helps to determine the long term reliability of the electronic circuit boards.

Durability and Long-term Performance: A flex circuit board is strengthened to bend more than 500 million times an ordinary life cycle of any given electronic device. Most of the PCBs can be bent on its vertical plane without braking; some have very tight bending radius of up to 360 degrees. Such circuit boards have low ductility and mass to enable them to perform well under vibration and shock conditions.

High System Reliability: Connections were one of the dominant focuses of the previous circuit boards and the connection failure was one of the most common factors causing the circuit board to fail. At present, it is possible to make PCBs with less number of interconnection points than before; this has enhanced reliability in extreme environments. Moreover, the use of polyimide material enhances thermal characteristic of these circuit boards.

Streamlined Designs Made Possible: Flexible circuit board technologies have enhanced geometries in circuit constructions. The components can be easily installed on the face of boards which makes the design of the two quite comprehensive.

Suited for High Temperature Applications: Polyimide for instance, is a versatile material that can be used where high temperature states are likely to predominate while counteracting such agents as acids, oils and gases. Therefor the flexible circuit boards can be worked to temperatures of up to 400 0 C and can work in very rigorous conditions.

Cost Savings: Flexible and thin polyimide films can be covered in a few spaces, which make the assembly costs lower. Flexible circuit boards also have the advantages of shortening the test time, wrong wire routing, rejects and reworking time.

Flexible Printed Circuit Board raw materials

Copper is preferably employed to help make flexible PCBs since it is the most accessible conductor material. Of that, their thickness may vary between 0.0007 inches and 0.0028 inches according to sources. At EFPCB, we can also draw boards with conductors like the aluminum, Electrodeposited (ED) copper, Rolled Annealed (RA) copper, Constantan, Inconel, silver ink, and many more.

In the PCB industry, new materials and new technologies will promote each other, which is suitable for flexible PCB because it has a higher requirement for its performance. When manufacturing microvia in flexible PCB, it is necessary to pay more attention to the mechanical intensity and deformation coefficient of different laminated materials and deformation is ideally estimated as the result of the fabrication of via. Lastly, accurate microvia will be produced into reality due to its tremendous importance and contributions to the growth of the electronics industry.

Taking into account that flexible PCB technology leverages the flexibility of substrate materials, it is synergistic with printed electronics technology that emerges in recent years. Therefore, it is critical to know how to use the printing technology in the additive process to produce more circuit boards, which is one of the new topics that flexible PCB industry should deal with.

Which Insulators and Material Finishes in flex Circuit Board

We are one of the oldest and the largest Flexible PCB Manufacturer and first to be approached when clients draw their ideas on the board. It is possible for us to make circuit boards out of various flexible substrate materials such as Polyimide, Polyester, PEN, PET, and others. Along with these we can offer these boards as per desired material finishes such as lead/Soldered, lead free /Soldered, tin, Nick gold, hard Nick gold, wire bond gold, silver, carbon and so on. The type of material finish selected will solely depend on customers’ application. Tin finishing is ideally suited for concealing exposed pads on the flex circuits while soft gold covering will be suitable for covering during an assembly process such as wire bonding.

In addition, with the emergence and development of intelligent terminal electronic products such as smart phones, tablet PCs, etc., there have been significant increases in the demands for flexible PCBs, flex-rigid PCBs and HDI PCBs as well. Looking at the future of the productivity of PCB, it can be predicted that flexible PCB will be an area of extreme concern in as much as PCB business is concerned. PCB boards are greatly related to the materials and technologies and so this article will, describe development possibilities and unpredictable difficulties that the flexible PCB has to bend down to in the full or new material and new technologies and this article will also explain about the future trend of flexible rigid PCB.