posted on 2017-06-16, 12:14authored byYing Ying Lim, Yee GohYee Goh, Manuba Yoshida, Tung T. Bui, Masahiro Aoyagi, Changqing Lui
Printed conductive traces on flexible substrates
offer many potential applications in the area of wearable electronics, ranging from search and rescue operations to health and physiological monitoring. Literature abounds on the effect of
sintering conditions on the DC electrical resistivity of printed traces, due to the applications considered which fall in the lower
frequency domain (megahertz range). There is a growing interest to investigate Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) for wearable electronics operating in the higher frequencies, due to
the advantages involved. At present there is little information available on the radio frequency (RF) performance of printed interconnects, and this work seeks to investigate the effect of the paste property on the DC conductivity and high frequency performance (≤ 30 GHz) of interconnects. The results obtained
suggest that paste levelling has a significant influence on the DC electrical performance. In addition, the DC conductivity values are possibly affected by the adhesion of the paste onto the
particular substrate during the printing process, which was observed to have a significant effect on the quality and thicknesses of the traces printed. Lastly, the influence of the DC conductivity on the high frequency performance of interconnects is investigated, where the measured results are validated with simulation results.
Funding
The authors are grateful to Rogers Corporation for the generous provision of the RO3006 laminates for this work. In addition, they are indebted to Computer Simulation Technology (CST) for the provision of the software license for this work, and to Dr Tracey Vincent (CST) for the technical support and helpful discussions rendered for this work. Lastly, the authors would like to acknowledge the 7th European Community Framework Programme for financial support through a Marie Curie International Research Staff Exchange Scheme (IRSES) Project entitled “Micro-Multi-Material Manufacture to Enable Multifunctional Miniaturised Devices (M6)” (Grant No. PIRSES
-GA-2010-269113). A part of this work was conducted at the AIST Nano-Processing Facility and NIMS Nanofabrication Platform, supported by the "Nanotechnology Platform Program" of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan.
History
School
Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering
Published in
IEEE Trans Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology
Volume
7
Issue
9
Citation
LIM, Y.Y. ... et al, 2017. 30-GHz high-frequency application of screen printed interconnects on an organic substrate. IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology, 7 (9), pp. 1506-1515.