A study of critical processing technologies of liquid crystal polymer printed circuit board for high speed application

Recent demand for high-frequency and high-speed signal transmission over GHz is driving the printed circuit board (PCB) industry towards a more advanced material-based era. To meet this market demand, liquid crystal polymer (LCP) has been suggested for its predominant material characteristics, such as high temperature resistance, low moisture absorption and excellent dimensional stability. However, former experimental and theoretical studies on the fabrication technology for processing the LCP PCB at different treatment conditions are lacking. This article thus evaluates the recent development of LCP PCB process technology. Different process approaches involving in lamination, drilling, desmearing, and metallization are proposed and compared, and associated reliability testing is addressed. Experimental results are shown to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed approach for developing the process technology of LCP PCB. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2010