Printed Circuit Design & Fab - September 2008 - (Page 36)

nanotEch Printable nanocomPosiTes Advanced materials provide a low cost and highly versatile method for manufacturing flexible electronic circuits. by RABINDRA N. DAS, HOW LIN, JOHN M. LAUFFER, MICHAEL ROWLANDS, NORMAN CARD and VOyA R. MARKOVICH Printing technologies provide a simple solution to build electronic circuits on low-cost flexible substrates. Nanocomposites will play an important role for developing advanced printable technology. A variety of printable nanomaterials for electronic packaging have been developed. This includes nanocapacitors and resistors as embedded passives, nanomagnetic materials, multifunctional materials, etc. Nanocomposites can provide high capacitance densities, ranging from 5nf/inch2 to 25 nF/inch2, depending on composition, particle size and film thickness. The electrical properties of capacitors fabricated from BaTiO3-epoxy nanocomposites showed a stable capacitance and low loss over a temperature range from 25ºC to 100ºC. In recent years, significant progress has been achieved in the development of semiconductor packaging technology using various printing methods such as screen-printing, ink-jet printing and microcontact printing. This trend is driven by demand for low-cost, large area, flexible and lightweight devices. Since printing is inherently additive in nature, material and disposal costs are expected to be reduced, resulting in an extremely low-net system cost. 36 Most of the research activities in this printable area have been devoted to developing ink-jet, solution-processable conductor materials.1-4 Printable materials need to be chemically and physically inert to the other functional, dielectric and photoimageable materials processing in the same layer to preserve the structural and electrical integrity of devices/packages, and they have to be operationally stable to sustain long operation life. For these purposes, organic and polymeric materials have been widely pursued since they offer numerous advantages, including lowtemperature processing, compatibility with organic substrates, stability and significant opportunity for structural modification. Nanocomposites provide the greatest potential benefit for high-density, high-speed, miniaturized advanced packaging. The small dimensions, strength and the remarkable physical and electrical properties of these structures make them very unique materials with a range of promising applications. Semiconductor devices based on nanocomposites are considered to be very promising for electronic applications since they may potentially be fabricated entirely using similar print- able polymer technologies where different active fillers can be introduced within the same functional polymer system. Several nanocomposites have been reported for advanced packaging applications. There is room for improvement of the existing materials, so that low processing temperatures, flexible and cost-effective printable processes and materials can be developed for large-scale production. Novel printable nanocomposites have the potential to surpass conventional composites to produce materials, structures, manufacturing and circuit applications compatible with laminated organic substrates. An electronic application of a printable nanocomposite such as conductive adhesives, interlayer dielectrics (low-k, low ! FiGurE 1. overview of some of the potential applications of nanocomposites in microelectronics. SEPTEMBER 2008 printEd CirCuit dESign & fAB

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Printed Circuit Design & Fab - September 2008

Printed Circuit Design & Fab - August 2008 Contents Our Line Market Watch Around the World Happenings ROI Positive Plating Off the Shelf Marketplace Ad Index EMC for the Real World Final Finish Forum Design for Green: Laminates A Systematic Approach to Increasing Layer Count The NTI $100 Million Club Printable Nanocomposites BGA Bulletin

Printed Circuit Design & Fab - September 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.