doi:10.3850/978-981-07-0319-6_221

ABSTRACT

This work presents research work towards a hot melt ink (HMI) printing technology which provides a customer-focused manufacture process for printed protective layers. The printed hot melt ink layers can be used as protective layers against subtractive surface structuring processes. Two of the possible fields of application is silicon surface structuring in the area of microsystems engineering and printed circuit board (PCB) fabrication. Without the need of lithography steps or photo masks, with the assistance of this fast conversion process from software data out of a design system directly into printed customized protective layers, innovative process chains are feasible. By eliminating the photo mask, photosensitive resist layers and all lithography steps one-piece-flow fabrication processes are realizable. The salient advantage of the printed HMI protective layers is the compatibility with many standard structuring processes and a lot of conventionally used chemical solutions. So the combination with standard fabrication lines or fabrication techniques is possible without changes in the fabrication flow.

Keywords: Ink jet printing, Printed circuit board, Hot melt ink, Protective layers.

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