Inkjet printed System-in-Package design and manufacturing

Additive manufacturing technology using inkjet offers several improvements to electronics manufacturing compared to current nonadditive masking technologies. Manufacturing processes can be made more efficient, straightforward and flexible compared to subtractive masking processes, several time-consuming and expensive steps can be omitted. Due to the additive process, material loss is minimal, because material is never removed as with etching processes. The amounts of used material and waste are smaller, which is advantageous in both productivity and environmental means. Furthermore, the additive inkjet manufacturing process is flexible allowing fast prototyping, easy design changes and personalization of products. Additive inkjet processing offers new possibilities to electronics integration, by enabling direct writing on various surfaces, and component interconnection without a specific substrate. The design and manufacturing of inkjet printed modules differs notably from the traditional way to manufacture electronics. In this study a multilayer inkjet interconnection process to integrate functional systems was demonstrated, and the issues regarding the design and manufacturing were considered. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.