High-Density Printed Electronics With VIAs

One of the key limitations in today's printed electronics is the lack of a high-throughput and robust vertical interconnect access (VIA) production process. There is no proven process and associated equipment to realize VIAs by printing.
As a consequence, the complexity of circuitry enabled by printed electronics lags considerably in comparison with circuitry produced through traditional lithography (etching) techniques. This is one of the primary reasons why double-sided printed electronics are also rare.

In the absence of a VIA production process/equipment, crossovers printed on top of isolation layers are commonly used in printed electronics. Typically, it is insufficient to print only one isolation layer before printing another conductive layer on top of the first circuit layer, due to silver migration issues. Hence, typically 2 or 3 layers of isolation are printed. This "stack printing" approach increases the overall costs due to additional process steps, material consumption, machine as well as personnel hours.

TracXon has developed and patented a high-speed, R2R-compatible VIA production process that has the potential to change the status quo. TracXon is building what is likely the first dedicated VIA filling machine, which is compatible with existing R2R as well as S2S printing lines in the industry. The main objective behind this development is to enable double-sided and high-density printed electronics, thereby closing the gap with traditional PCB techniques in terms of complexity of the circuitry. This concept will be presented for the first time at this event.