At the recent printed Electronic conference staged by IDTechEx in Dresden Germany, Koichi Mizugaki of SEIKO EPSON Corporation described how SEIKO EPSON has been working on the manufacture of Printed Circuit Boards through inkjet printing. Koichi Mizugaki introduced
the concept of "The Desktop factory": the ability in the future to print your own display, PCB etc at home.
Traditional photolithographic processes call for large machines and large clean rooms and are harsh on the environment as well as being energy and material consuming. Ink jet has none of these problems.
This micro piezo approach has been used as follows:
The array of possibilities for this approach is summarized below:
As we have mentioned before, printing is working its way back into old technologies like Plasma Display panel and LCD, giving them new life. Epson gave an example of printing the LCD alignment layer:
The PCB approach is as follows, with twenty layer flexible PCBs, with the layering totaling 200 microns in thickness, having been made in this way:
He said the desktop electronic factory is on the way and summarised the benefit of the inkjet route as follows:
Also attend Printed Electronics USA 2008 or Printed Electronics Asia 2008 and read Organic & Printed Electronics in East Asia.
