Printed Circuit boards (PCBs) are traditionally fabricated using subtractive technologies such as lithography and etching. Discrete passive and active components are typically attached by pick and place and then connected using wire bonding and soldering. In this paper we show that direct printing can replace many of the traditional steps and consequently allow circuits to be fabricated on novel substrates and 3D geometries. Specifically, we report on the integration of Aerosol Jet® with the printing of interconnects, passives and COTS attachment. The automated generation of the printed patterns (tool paths) is based on standard Eagle CAD PCB layout software. Multilayer circuits are fabricated by alternately printing metallic wires and a polymeric insulator. Passive components such as resistors and capacitors are printed from a library. The carbon-based resistors have a range of 50 Ω to 1 MΩ and the parallel plate capacitors range from 1 pF to 1 nF. Active devices can be incorporated into the circuit by attaching discrete IC chips with metallic and adhesive inks. The processing temperature is below 150°C for all the printing and curing steps. Overall, Aerosol Jet® is a cost effective method for directly printing circuits onto non-traditional substrates and is also desirable for prototyping and short-run manufacturing
Kurt K. Christenson, Jason A. Paulsen, Michael J. Renn, Kelley McDonald, Justin Bourassa, "Direct Printing of Circuit Boards Using Aerosol Jet®" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies and Digital Fabrication (NIP27), 2011, pp 433 - 436, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2011.27.1.art00005_2