Design, manufacture and test for reliable 3D printed electronics packaging

Abstract

The development of a surrogate modelling approach to aid design of 3D printed electronics packaging structures is presented, alongside a detailed overview of manufacture and reliability of a representative test structure. An overview of the current status in 3D printing in the electronics packaging sector is provided. Subsequently, a surrogate modelling approach for correlating thermomechanical stresses within a package to a number of design parameters is presented. This approach enables the design of a package to be considered in a more insightful manner and can additionally be integrated into condition based monitoring tools capable of enhancing product robustness. An overview of an advanced electronics packaging system capable of 3D printing electronics packages is presented.The system combines inkjet printing and curing of multiple materials, including conductive silver inks, with precision component placement, multi-material dispensing and 3D inspection systems to provide a highly flexible solution for rapid manufacture of electronics packages. Test structures manufactured using the system were subjected to a vigorous set of reliability tests. Details of the test regime and related results are presented. All tests were passed, indicating the robustness of the described manufacturing process.The key originality of the work is that it provides a comprehensive overview of the journey from design assessment an optimisation, through the manufacturing process and on to reliability testing. Areas of novelty in this work are associated with the development of fast, accurate surrogate models able to predict key reliability factors in response to a range of design parameters and insight into the development of a 3D manufacturing system for electronics packaging.

Comparative Reliability of Inkjet-Printed Electronics Packaging

“…The reliability of test structures, illustrated in Figure 3, manufactured using the NextFactory system, has been assessed through comprehensive JEDEC testing. The results of these tests, described in [58], indicate that the products were reliable with all tests passed.…”

3D additive lithography for electronics towards highly integrated freeform structural electronics

“…In recent years, the integration of electronics into 3D printed devices has been receiving increasing attention. [2][3][4][5][6] Fully additive manufacturing of electronics has the potential to lower the environmental impact compared to conventional printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing; but also allows for the freeform, three-dimensional, heterogeneous integration of components such as chips, light sources, sensors, and other functional components.…”

Anisotropic Thermally Conductive Composites Enabled by Acoustophoresis and Stereolithography

“…As electronics miniaturize and the power density of components increases in devices like smartphones, light emitting diode (LED) arrays, and laser diodes, heat dissipation increasingly becomes a limiting factor to improving device performance, necessitating new materials and strategies for heat management. [1][2][3] In the computer chip manufacturing industry, for example, new polymer composite infill materials with high thermal conductivity are needed to cool the next generation of stacked chips, [1] and in LED, battery, laser diode, and other electronics packaging, 3D printed polymer composites have become a leading candidate for lowering the processing cost of heat sinks, heat spreaders, and printed components with integrated electronics. [2,4] For these applications, developing composite materials with higher conductivity that retain processability is a difficult problem: the material must have high enough thermal conductivity to transport heat from hot spots to heatsinks without buildup, but this generally requires a high loading of conductive filler particles [5,6] which makes the material viscous during processing and brittle after solidification.…”