Reactive material jetting of polyimide insulators for complex circuit board design

Fan Zhang, Ehab Saleh, Jayasheelan Vaithilingam, You Li, Christopher J. Tuck, Richard J.M. Hague, Ricky D. Wildman, Yinfeng He

Research output: Journal PublicationArticlepeer-review

29 Citations (Scopus)

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.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)477-484
Number of pages8
JournalAdditive Manufacturing
Volume25
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2019
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • 3D print
  • Additive manufacturing
  • Inkjet
  • Polyimide
  • Printed electronics

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Biomedical Engineering
  • General Materials Science
  • Engineering (miscellaneous)
  • Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

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