Process for the Environmentally Friendly Fabrication of Multilayer Printed Circuit Boards

The treatment of the waste by-products of electronics manufacturing is raising increasingly important issues. Of particular concern is contaminated waste water resulting from the stripping, etching, plating, and washing operations in printed circuit board fabrication. Waste treatment has proven to be an expensive and cumbersome solution which has not completely solved the problem. In order to achieve significant reductions in harmful waste geneation and emissions, electronics manufacturers should employ materials and process which are intrinsically waste-free so that there is no waste that has to be treated or disposed. Ideally, a new process for the production and assembly of printed circuits would completely eliminate waste-water from the manufacturing process. This proposal entails the adoption of additive printed circuitry by means of dry printing of solderable electrically conductive inks. To do so, new processes and equipment which do not exist today will have to be developed and demonstrated. The objectives of Phase I will be to prove the principle of waste-water free fabrication of state of the art multilayer printed circuit structures with conductive inks by employing a printed through hole, a sequential printing process for multilayer with adequate planarization, and produce fine lines using photoimagable dielectrics. Anticipated Benefits: Anticipate that this work will successfully lead to the development of environmentally safe processes for the fabrication of multilayer printed circuits and multi-chip modules. These materials will enable the fabrication of printed circuits with no generation of waste-water streams of any kind. The materials can replace current, environmentally harmful printed circuit fabrication materials and processes in every area.