Process Optimization of Aerosol Based Printing of Polyimide for Capacitor Application

Direct write printing approaches provide the opportunity for additive manufacturing (AM) to impact the electronics industry. This class of technologies provides a path to cost effectively print electronic components in low volume, high mix production. The printed electronics technologies provide an opportunity to explore new materials, new processing approaches and unique component configurations to alter the electronics industry. A new project underway to explore printing of planar, nonplanar and three-dimensional capacitors will be discussed. Aerosol based printing technologies applied to dielectric printing have demonstrated the ability to print small features in three dimensions. This presentation will cover recent research in optimizing process variables both with materials and deposition parameters to obtain desirable film properties. This work will compare the film properties using the additive manufacturing approach to traditional casting. Finally, this presentation will describe an optimized process in detail and the rational for the processes chosen.