Characterization of ICA attachment of SMD on inkjet-printed substrates

As electronics industry is moving more and more towards flexible substrates and products more knowledge is needed on new additive production technologies enabling simplified and cost-efficient fabrication of these flexible products. Printable electronics in general is expected to reshape the manufacturing of low-cost mass production of low-end products such as RFID-tags, antennas, keyboards, wireless sensors and displays. This paper focuses on analyzing component attachments of traditional SMD components on inkjet-printed substrates with electrically conductive adhesive and evaluating the variables affecting the component attachment performance. Component attachments electrical performance was evaluated by varying several fabrication parameters and analyzing the changes in the component attachment resistance. The final conclusion reached in this paper is that adequate electrical performance can be achieved with both of the tested materials and both of the tested component sizes as long as proper production parameters were used.