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November 2015 • The PCB Magazine 77 Dirk Müller, Ph.D. is director of marketing at coherent Inc. to reach the author, click here. AS VIAS SHrInK, oPPorTUnITIeS For LASer DrILLInG exPAnD ArTiCle response to this need, laser manufacturers have already developed a variety of tools to opti- mally support next generation PCBs, substrates and interposers for today's advanced packages, and which deliver the performance overhead to support expected miniaturization trends in all these areas for the foreseeable future. PCB Figure 4: Varying laser fluence enables manipulation of feature side-wall angles, which can be important in subsequent deposition steps. at the recent meeting of the International micro- electronics assembly and Packaging Society (ImaPS 2015), imec and cmSt (imec's associated lab at ghent university) presented a novel technology for thermoplastically deformable electronics enabling low-cost 2.5D free-form rigid electronic objects. the technology is under evaluation in Philips leD lamp carriers, a downlight luminaire and an omnidirectional light source, to demonstrate the potential of this technol- ogy in innovative lighting applications. thanks to its energy-efficiency, excel- lent light quality, and high output power, light emitting diode (leD) technology is becoming the sustainable light source for the 21st century. But in addition, it also allows to design unprecedented, innovative lighting solutions. Imec and cmSt's new thermoplastically deformable electronic circuits now add a new dimension to the possibilities to fabricate novel lamp designs as well as smart applications in ambient intelligence and wearables. the production process was developed in col- laboration between the industrial and academic partners involved in the FP7 project teraSel: imec, cmSt (ghent university), acB, holst centre, nie- bling Formtechnologie; Sintex nP and Philips lighting BV. teraSel is a euro- pean effort focusing on the develop- ment, industrial implementation and application of large-area, cost-effective, randomly shaped electronics and sensor circuit technologies. Imec and Ghent University Present Thermoplastically Deformable Electronic Circuits