The Aerosol Jet system is a fast, flexible tool that can produce miniaturized electronic circuitry and components, without the need for the masks, patterns and chemicals that are common to screen-printing processes.

The system can directly deposit a wide range of commercial and custom electronic materials, including conductor, insulator and adhesive formulations onto virtually any substrate. Support of nanomaterials allows for low-temperature processing and ultra-thin layers where needed. The resulting functional circuits can have line widths and pattern features from below 10 microns to greater than 100 microns.

The Aerosol Jet system integrates well within the current electronics manufacturing landscape based on both functional and economic advantages. While costly thin-film methods used for semiconductor production are optimized for sub-micron features, and screen-printing processes used for PWB and component production have difficulty getting below 100 microns, the Aerosol Jet system bridges the gap that exists between these traditional technologies.

Printed Circuit Boards

Aerosol Jet systems address the need for miniaturization of the circuit boards that serve as the backbone of all electronics products. While mainstream screen-printing methods are hard pressed to produce traces below 100 microns, Aerosol Jet systems can fabricate high-density circuitry in materials such as copper, silver and gold with line widths down to 10 microns and smaller. In addition to "direct write" of conductive traces, the Aerosol Jet system can be used to deposit a full range of electronics materials, including insulators, adhesives, and even intermediary materials such as photo-resist or seed layers for copper plating.

Embedded Passives and Components

Current screen-printing techniques are not an effective solution for embedded passives because they require laser trimming, and multiple screening operations are required to produce widely varying resistor values on a single layer.

Aerosol Jet systems provide a compelling alternative for EPC production since it can directly manufacture high tolerance passives with a wide range of resistance values in a single layer. The solution can also be used to "embed" other components, such as capacitors, filters, antennae, etc., and can further be used for producing the trace interconnects within a layer. Finally, the additive nature of Aerosol Jet printing means that it can be utilized in conjunction with existing methods to add high-value passives or as a tool to repair passives that do not meet specification.

Flex Circuits

Aerosol Jet systems are ideal for the production of circuits on flexible substrates since the process operates at extremely low temperatures. In such applications, Aerosol Jet systems have demonstrated excellent adhesion to the substrate, sufficient to withstand the stresses of dynamic flexing.

Hybrid Manufacturing for Electronic Devices

Next Generation devices such as fuel cells, flat panel displays, and MEMS often require multi-layer multi-material manufacturing techniques. With its additive approach, an Aerosol Jet system can be a valuable contributor to such multi-step manufacturing processes, both as a development and prototyping tool, and as a production solution. Aerosol Jet system demonstrations in this area include sub-micron layers of platinum for fuel cells, high-density back planes (organic and metal) for flat panel displays, and deposition of photo-resist for MEMS production. Additionally, Aerosol Jet systems are being used to repair production defects on flat panel displays.

Semiconductor Packaging

Aerosol Jet system capabilities further provide for reductions in the size of electronic systems by enabling a range of High Density Interconnect applications such as chip-scale packaging, flip-chip packaging and even direct die attach right to the substrate which would eliminate the need for discrete packaging. Other emerging semiconductor level applications include System-on-Chip and System-in-Package.