PCB Technical - Talking about the development and application prospects of flexible circuit boards

I. Overview of flexible circuit boards

Flexible printed circuit(Flexible Printed Circuit, FPC), also known as flexible circuit board, flexible circuit board, or FPC for short, has high wiring density, light weight, thin thickness, less wiring space restriction, high flexibility, etc. The advantages are fully in line with the development trend of light, thin, short and small electronic products, and are an effective solution to meet the requirements of miniaturization and mobility of electronic products. FPC can be bent, wound, and folded freely, and can withstand millions of dynamic bending without damaging the wire. It can be arranged arbitrarily according to the space layout requirements, and can move and expand in three-dimensional space, so as to achieve component assembly and wire connection The effect of integration. FPC can greatly reduce the volume and weight of electronic products, and is suitable for the development of electronic products in the direction of high density, miniaturization and high reliability. Therefore, it is widely used in PC and peripheral products, automotive electronics, medical equipment, communication products, consumer electronics and other fields.

FPCA (Flexible Printed Circuit Assembly) products, namely FPC components, are the extension of the FPC business industrial chain, and the mainstream technology in the industry is SMT. SMT (Surface Mount Technology) is the surface mount technology of electronic circuits, also known as surface mount or surface mount technology. It is a kind of surface mount components without leads or short leads (SMC/SMD for short, chip components in Chinese) mounted on the surface of a printed circuit board or other substrates by reflow soldering or dip soldering. Circuit assembly technology to be welded and assembled. The application of SMT technology has the following advantages:

1, the assembly density is high, the electronic products are small in size, and the weight is light. The volume and weight of the patch components are only about 1/10 of the traditional plug-in components. Generally, after SMT is adopted, the volume of electronic products is reduced by 40% to 60%, and the weight is reduced. 60%～80%. Second, it has high reliability, strong earthquake resistance, low solder joint defect rate and good high frequency characteristics. Third, it reduces electromagnetic and radio frequency interference. Fourth, it is easy to realize automation and improve production efficiency. Fifth, save materials, energy, equipment, manpower, time, etc.

2, the application of flexible circuit boards

The demand trend of light, thin, short and small electronic products has caused FPC to rapidly shift from military supplies to civilian use to consumer electronic products. In recent years, almost all high-tech electronic products that have emerged in recent years have adopted a large number of flexible circuit boards. Japanese scholar Kenshi Sakura said in the book "High-density Flexible Printed Circuit Boards": Almost all electrical products use flexible circuit boards, but now it is difficult to find slightly more complex electronic products that do not use flexible circuit boards. NS.

3, the market prospects of flexible circuit boards

The "Guide to Priority Development of High-Tech Industrialization Key Fields (2011)" mentioned: The National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Commerce and the Information Multilayer printed circuit boards and flexible circuit boards are listed as one of the current priority areas of information high-tech industrialization. With the continuous advancement of informatization and intelligent construction, the market's demand for flexible circuit boards will also increase.

(1) The mobile phone market. As far as mobile phones are concerned, FPCs are mainly used as parts for signal connection such as folding and rotating in mobile phones. At present, more than 3 FPCs are used in mobile phones. With the popularity of light, thin, short and small high-function mobile phones, FPC is driven. need. FPC can be used in functions such as mobile phone bends, LCD modules, camera modules, buttons, side buttons, antennas, and battery control. At present, FPC is the most widely used in the Hinge Part of mobile phones. The common ones are folding, sliding, clamshell and three-dimensional rotating bodies. Most of them are double-sided or multi-layer FPC designs. It is the largest FPC in mobile phone applications. By. As for the button FPC, camera module, antenna or battery FPC, it is the selective design of the mobile phone designer. Under the situation that the above-mentioned selective functions will gradually be incorporated into the standardized design of mobile phones, it will help increase the amount of FPC. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the 2014 Communications Operation Industry Statistical Bulletin that in 2014, there was a net increase of 39.426 million telephone users nationwide, bringing the total number to 1.536 billion, an increase of 2.6%, a decrease of 5 percentage points from the previous year. Among them, there was a net increase of 56.98 million mobile phone users, bringing the total to 1.286 billion. The penetration rate of mobile phone users reached 94.5 units/100 people, an increase of 3.7 units/100 people over the previous year. And smartphones dominated by Apple and Android phones have become the first choice for mobile phone users. According to the "2013-2014 China Mobile Phone/Smartphone Market Research Annual General Report", the proportion of global smartphone users in 2015 exceeded the global population for the first time. One-tenth, by 2018, one-third of global consumers will be smartphone users, with a total of more than 2.56 billion people. The smartphone user index in 2018 represents half of the global mobile phone users, which means that feature phones will become a minority in the field of electronic communications. The FPC content of smart phones is higher than that of general electronic products. Smart phones use 5-12 pieces of FPC, which is 1 to 5 pieces higher than that of feature phones. The FPC output value of each smart phone is about 2 to 3 times that of feature phones. Such a huge market will inevitably drive the rapid development of related fields. The camera modules, antennas, displays, USB cables, etc. of smart phones are all inseparable from FPC.

(2) Automotive electronics market. Under the trend of automotive electronics, automotive control systems, such as dashboard display, air quality, audio, displays, sensors, etc., require high signal transmission and high reliability to make FPC begin to show its advantages. In FPC components precision In addition to the trend of the three-dimensional structure of the car body, the wiring area is narrow and bent, the use of FPC components can better meet the design requirements. According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in 2014, my country's automobile production and sales increased by 7.26% and 6.86% year-on-year. Among them, passenger vehicle production and sales increased by 10.15% and 9.89% year-on-year, which is still the main growth force.

(3) Medical monitoring equipment. In the past ten years, the sales scale of China's medical device market has increased from 17.9 billion yuan in 2001 to 212 billion yuan in 2013. Excluding the impact of price factors, it has increased by 11.84 times in 13 years. According to the statistics of a sample survey by the Medical Device Branch of the China Medical Materials Association, the national medical device sales in 2014 were about 255.6 billion yuan, an increase of 43.6 billion yuan from the previous year's 212 billion yuan, a growth rate of 20.06%. As the conventional medical equipment in hospitals and other medical institutions, medical monitoring equipment has gradually become widely used in large and medium-sized hospitals. With the rapid development of my country’s economy, the state attaches great importance to the construction of primary-level medical and health systems at the county, township, and community levels. Under the joint promotion of internal and external needs such as aging, second-child policy, consumption upgrades, medical reform investment, and policy support, and With the current domestic overall level maintained at a relatively low level, there is still considerable room for development of medical monitoring equipment, and the development prospects of the domestic medical device industry are worth looking forward to.

In summary, as society’s requirements for informatization and intelligence continue to increase, and it has penetrated almost all walks of life, as mentioned in the article, it has been difficult to find slightly more complex electronic products that do not use FPC and FPC components. . As the country will further increase investment in electronic information construction in various fields, the acceleration of electronic information construction in downstream areas will inevitably drive the development of FPC and FPC component industries. At the same time, 4G business has been fully rolled out across the country, which will also bring new development opportunities for the flexible printed circuit board industry