Joe Fjelstad Releases Flexible Circuit Technology, 3rd Edition

11/01/2006

SEASIDE, OR - The third edition of Flexible Circuit Technology features new technologies and applications that have developed over the eight years since the second edition was published.

Although structurally unchanged, this edition incorporates emerging technologies for manufacturing circuits, chip packaging, printed electronics, radio frequency identification (RFID), and other dynamic areas of the flex-circuit industry. “There are current applications and there are futuristic applications, but what’s really driving the industry is volumetric interconnection that lets you design a circuit flat and then fold it,” explained Fjelstad, who believes the opening range of applications, even more so than advances in the circuit technology, will revive and expand the flex-circuit sector. “It’s certainly finding more applications. The technology has a sort of ubiquity, but it does continue to branch out in more areas.”

Fjelstad discusses the evolution of technologies like RFID tags as incremental improvements on flex-circuit design and manufacture. “As features get finer, we are not inventing a new technology, but improving an existing one,” he said. These improvements lead to viable photoelectrics, such as solar cells.

Fjelstad’s final area of concern for flex circuits is the environment. Printing circuitry onto flexible, organic substrates like paper or cloth eliminates many of the poisonous materials in the composition and manufacturing processes. He sees innovation in flex-circuit usage as leading conversions to safer, healthier modes of living.

Joe Fjelstad, cofounder of SiliconPipe Inc. and Advanced Packaging Editorial Advisory Board member, may be contacted at 408/973-1744; [email protected].