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Joe Fjelstad Releases Flexible Circuit Technology, 3rd Edition
December 31, 1969 |Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
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. This updated version on interconnection technology will be available from BR Publishing of Seaside, Ore., as a full-color PDF e-book, or in a traditional printed format.
Flex circuits have changed in the eight years since the previous edition, said Fjelstad. Although structurally unchanged, the latest edition of the book 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. He wrote the text for industry newcomers as well as veteran engineers.
Flex and rigid circuits have diverged significantly in recent years targeting different markets and occupying unequal amounts of market share. The sectors are projected to follow such different patterns that analysts will often consider each separately in month-to-month or year-to-year industry analyses. Fjelstad 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." Military and tracking technologies are major R&D drivers, he added. Fjelstad also finds a lot of variation in the definitions given for flex circuits. As the definition is broadened, the market encompassed by the term grows larger.
RFID tags are an example of flex-circuit technology that is found in wide-spread use and dynamic applications wherein electronic components must be able to bend and move. 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, and printed circuits with conductive nanoparticles comprising the ink.
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 of PCBs. Solar-powered devices operating on flex circuits use clean fuel and reduce emissions. He sees innovation in flex-circuit usage as leading conversions to safer, healthier modes of living.
Joe Fjelstad, cofounder, SiliconPipe Inc., may be contacted at (408)973-1744; jfjelstad@siliconpipe.com.