When I was young (I didn't say "younger"), Charles Atlas had a series of cartoon ads. The scene was a beach where a skinny boy got sand kicked in his face. Most episodes depicted this skinny boy enrolling in a body building course and, soon thereafter, returning to the beach to be the kicker instead of the kickee. The ad was successful for Charles Atlas, and played well in the cities with or without beaches.
This issue of The Board Authority has been devoted to a form of interconnect that relies on its "skinniness" to provide many salient features to the world of electronics. Indeed, the flexible circuit would not be very flexible if not for its thinness. It would not be a space or weight saver if it were thicker. Beyond the dimensional aspects of this special form of printed wiring, its thinness brings processing advantages: aspect ratios in the plated vias are always small, making the reliability of layer-to-layer connections reliable; and the vias or pathways between circuit layers are short, allowing mechanical punching and lasing to be viable techniques. So, unlike me and my childhood brethren, these "skinny" circuits didn't have to bulk up to be sand kickers.
Flexible circuits came into favor early because of their foldability and knack of being tucked in the electronic enclosure with ease. As electronic packages shrank in size and mass, flex became an acceptable platform.
Designers—who had to slake the consumers appetite for smaller yet more powerful, lighter yet more feature packed electronics—turned to flexible circuitry in ever-increasing numbers. The caveats are many to working with this skinny flexible circuit. But as the industry matured, it departed from the old fiefdoms where each manufacturer had "special" design features. Through the efforts of organizations such as IPC and JPCA, standards for design and performance have emerged.
To be sure, each flex manufacturer has carved out certain niches of expertise and can provide cost reducing efficiencies. Through all of this, the industry has become more viable and geared to respond to its growing customer base. It is hard to stay away from this skinny circuit. The applications for the flexible circuit range from your automobiles to portable phones to computers to cameras to a myriad of electronic devices known only by their acronyms. The robust growth attesting the flexible circuit's success is tied to its functionality and not its ability to kick sand. Sorry, Chuck.
WILLIAM JACOBI
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