PCB News - Understand the working principle and difference between PCB and FPC

PCB, the so-called printed circuit board, is often referred to as a hard board. Is the electronic components of the support body, is a very important electronic components. PCB generally uses FR4 as the base material, also called hard board, which cannot be bent or flexed. PCB is generally used in some places where there is no need to bend and have relatively hard strength, such as computer motherboards and mobile phone motherboards.

Understand the working principle and difference between PCB and FPC

And FPC, actually belongs to a kind of PCB, but has a big difference with the traditional printed circuit board. It is called a flexible board, called a flexible circuit board. FPC generally uses PI as the base material, which is a flexible material and can be bent and flexed at will. FPC normally operates on repeated flexes and links of small parts, but now it's not just that. Smartphones are thinking about bendable prevention, which requires FPC as a key technology.

In fact, FPC is not only a circuit board that can be flexed, but also an important design method for connecting three-dimensional circuit structures, which can be combined with other electronic product designs to build a variety of different applications. Therefore, from this point of view, FPC and PCB are very different.

For a PCB, the circuit board is generally planar unless the circuit is made into a three-dimensional form by means of film glue. Therefore, FPC is a good solution to make full use of three-dimensional space. In terms of hard board, the current common space extension scheme is to use the slot and interface card, but FPC can make a similar structure as long as the switch design, and the directional design is also more elastic. With the one-piece connection FPC, two hard plates can be connected into a set of parallel circuit systems, or can be turned at any Angle to adapt to different product shape design.

FPC can of course use terminal connection mode for line connection, but can also use hard and soft board to avoid these connection mechanism, a single FPC can use layout mode to configure many hard board and connect them. This approach reduces the interference of connectors and terminals, which can improve signal quality and product reliability. The figure shows the soft and hard boards constructed by multiple PCB and FPC.