Processing and qualification of polymer based pastes in electronics production

This paper presents results from experiments to integrate printable polymer thick-film pastes into the process chain of Surface Mount Technology (SMT). With a novel paste system under investigation the focus was to examine technological limitations resulting from processing the paste in screen printing. Furthermore tests were performed to qualify bonding alternatives between printed paste and SMT-components and conductor-tracks, respectively. Thereby excellent printing results of structures sized down to approximately 125 μm on flexible and rigid substrate material emerged, as well as reliable interconnections.