TW201717718A - Improved process for circuit substrate - Google Patents

Abstract

An improved process for circuit substrate includes the following steps. The first step is to provide a base substrate. The next step is to form a patterned catalyst layer on the base substrate by screen printing. The next step is to conformally form a circuit layer on the patterned catalyst layer by electroless plating. Thereby, the processing time and cost can be reduced remarkably.

Description

Improved circuit board method

The invention relates to a circuit board manufacturing technology, in particular to an improved manufacturing method of a circuit board capable of greatly shortening a processing time.

With the rapid development of Taiwan's electronics industry, the demand for printed circuit boards has grown quite rapidly, and the circuit board has become a key component of today's consumer electronics products and related information and communication peripheral products.

In the manufacturing process of the circuit substrate, the most critical step is to metallize the surface of the substrate to form a circuit, and the methods commonly used for metallization of the substrate surface in the industry include an evaporation process, a photolithography process, a screen printing process, and the like. . However, in terms of the evaporation process and the lithography process, although both have the advantages of high precision and good electrical characteristics, there are also complicated steps, high cost of the required process equipment, and waste generated ( For example, although the process of screen printing silver paste is relatively simple, it still needs to overcome the disadvantages of the increasing price of silver glue and the high resistance of the formed metal circuit and easy to break.

In view of the lack of prior art, the inventors have been engaged in the design and manufacturing experience of related fields for many years, and actively studied how to metallize the surface of the substrate under limited resources and time, in all conditions of caution The invention was finally developed under consideration.

The invention aims to provide an improved method for manufacturing a circuit board from the viewpoint of reducing the difficulty and complexity of the process, and to overcome the shortcomings of the prior art.

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention adopts the following technical solution: an improved method for manufacturing a circuit substrate, comprising the steps of: firstly, providing a substrate; then, forming a patterned catalyst layer on the substrate by using a screen printing process; A circuit layer is formed on the patterned catalyst layer by an electroless plating process.

The invention has the beneficial effects that: the invention firstly prints the catalyst material on the surface of the substrate by screen printing, and then performs circuit layout in this way, and then directly uses the electroless plating to direct the metal. The process design of “reducing on the catalyst to form the circuit layer” not only simplifies the process, but also reduces the difficulty and complexity of the process technology, and greatly reduces the processing time and production cost of the circuit substrate, especially the process time. One-fourth of the screen printing process, and also ensure the quality of the circuit board.

According to the above, the improved manufacturing method can be made into a circuit board having good electrical characteristics, and a circuit layer having a uniform thickness, a small porosity, and a flexible circuit layer can be formed on the surface of the substrate regardless of the complexity of the geometry of the substrate. In addition, since the equipment used in the improved manufacturing method is easy to obtain, has a low cost of purchase, and can be used in a roll-to-roll (R2R) manufacturing technology, it is suitable for industrial mass production.

The detailed description of the present invention and the accompanying drawings are to be understood by the claims The scope is subject to any restrictions.

1‧‧‧ circuit substrate

10‧‧‧Substrate

20‧‧‧ patterned catalyst layer

30‧‧‧Line layer

40‧‧‧ Surface modification layer

1 is a flow chart showing an improved manufacturing method of a circuit board according to a first embodiment of the present invention.

2A to 3B are schematic views showing a process of an improved process for a circuit substrate according to a first embodiment of the present invention.

4 is a flow chart showing a method of improving a circuit board according to a second embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 5 is a schematic view showing the process of the improved method for manufacturing the circuit board according to the second embodiment of the present invention.

The disclosure of the present invention mainly relates to a new process for a circuit substrate, which is characterized in that a screen printing method is first used to print a catalyst material on a surface of a substrate, and the circuit layout is performed in this manner, and then utilized. Electroless plating allows the metal to be directly reduced to the catalyst to form a wiring layer. Compared with the existing processes (such as: thin film process, screen printing silver paste, FPC process), the equipment used in this new process is easy to obtain and the purchase cost is lower, so the production cost can be reduced; more importantly, it can be greatly shortened. Process time and ensure product quality.

The embodiments of the present invention are described in the following with reference to the accompanying drawings, and those of ordinary skill in the art can understand the advantages and advantages of the present invention. The present invention can be implemented or applied in various other specific embodiments, and various modifications and changes can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. In addition, the drawings of the present invention are merely illustrative and are not described in terms of actual dimensions. The following embodiments will further explain the related technical content of the present invention, but the disclosure is not intended to limit the technical scope of the present invention.

[First Embodiment]

Please refer to FIG. 1 , which is a flow chart of a method for improving a circuit board according to a first embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIG. 2A to FIG. 3B , a schematic diagram of a process for improving the circuit substrate is shown. As shown in FIG. 1 , the improved method provided in this embodiment includes: step S100, providing a substrate; step S102, forming a patterned catalyst layer on the substrate by using a screen printing process; and step S104, using no An electroplating process is performed to form a wiring layer on the patterned catalyst layer.

As shown in FIG. 2A and FIG. 2B , in the specific implementation, the substrate 10 may be a plastic substrate, a ceramic substrate or a glass substrate; for example, the material of the plastic substrate may be polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Polyurethane (PU), polyimine (PI), polycarbonate (PC) or acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene copolymer (ABS), the material of the ceramic substrate may be alumina, aluminum nitride, Zirconium oxide, cerium oxide or lanthanum carbide, the material of the glass fiber substrate may be epoxy resin glass fiber (FR4), however, the substrate 10 is not limited to the above materials; for other embodiments of the embodiment, the substrate 10 A metal oxide substrate or a tantalum substrate treated by electrochemical anodization may also be used. Preferably, the surface of the substrate 10 can be cleaned with an RCA solution (i.e., RCA cleaning method, a standard wet cleaning step currently employed by the industry).

Incidentally, the RCA solution mainly has two kinds of RCA-1 and RCA-2, wherein the composition of RCA-1 includes NH ₄ OH, H ₂ O ₂ and H ₂ O (NH ₄ OH: H ₂ O ₂ : H ₂ O is 1:1:5). The main function of RCA-1 is to remove organic particles remaining on the surface of substrate 10. The composition of RCA-2 contains HCl, H ₂ O ₂ and H ₂ O (HCl: H ₂ O ₂ : H ₂ O is 1:1:6), and the main function of RCA-2 is to remove metal contaminants remaining on the surface of the substrate 10.

In step S102, a screen (not shown) may be placed on the substrate 10/cleaned substrate 10, wherein the screen has a predetermined pattern, and then a doctor blade (not shown) is used. A catalyst composition is extruded from the screen and transferred onto the surface of the substrate 10; then a drying process is performed, for example, placing the substrate 10 on which the catalyst composition has been applied in an oven, and Baking is carried out at a temperature between 60 ° C and 200 ° C, preferably between 60 ° C and 150 ° C, whereby a patterned catalyst layer 20 having a thickness of from 0.1 μm to 30 μm is formed on the surface of the substrate 10.

In this embodiment, the catalyst composition comprises a palladium catalyst and a curing agent, and the hardener comprises about 1% to 10% of the catalyst composition; wherein the catalyst can be used in the catalyst of the present invention. The palladium catalyst in the composition is not particularly limited, and examples thereof include palladium sulfate, palladium chloride, palladium dichloride, palladium dichloride, or palladium diamine nitrite, etc., which are generally included in the technical field of the present invention. Well known to the knowledge, and the hardener may be selected from the group consisting of fatty amines, cyclic fatty amines, polyamines, aromatic amines, acid anhydrides, At least one of a Lewis acid and an imidazole hardener, or a combination thereof.

As shown in FIG. 3A and FIG. 3B, in step S104, the substrate 10 on which the patterned catalyst layer 20 is formed may be immersed in a plating bath containing metal ions to be reacted for a certain period of time (eg, 5 minutes). So that the metal ions in the plating bath can be simply converted into a metal state by a redox method by a catalytic action of a palladium catalyst, and formed on the patterned catalyst layer 20 to form a wiring layer; Preferably, the electroless plating process is a chemical copper process. The circuit substrate 10 can be fabricated after all the above steps are completed.

In this embodiment, the material of the formed circuit layer 30 may be copper, nickel, aluminum, chromium, silver or gold, and the thickness is between 1 μm and 30 μm. However, the actual thickness of the circuit layer 30 depends on the material of the substrate 10 . For example, the thickness of the plastic substrate is generally closer to 0.1 μm, and the thickness of the ceramic substrate is generally closer to 1 μm to 30 μm. The plating bath used in the electroless plating process is an alkaline plating bath, for example, a copper chloride plating bath, the temperature is between 20 ° C and 100 ° C, and the pH value is between 9 and 14; The reaction time of the electroplating process is between 5 mins and 500 mins, however the actual reaction time of the electroless plating process depends on the thickness of the circuit layer 30. It should be noted that the improved process provided by the present embodiment can achieve the uniformity of the circuit layer 30, the porosity is small, and can be flexed through the process design of the "screen printing catalyst combined with electroless deposition of metal", regardless of the substrate. How complex the geometry of 10 is, the thickness of each of the portions of the substrate 10 can be nearly uniform, so that a circuit board having good electrical characteristics can be fabricated.

[Second embodiment]

4 is a flow chart of a method for improving a circuit board according to a second embodiment of the present invention; and referring to FIG. 5, a schematic diagram of a process for improving the circuit board. As shown in FIG. 4, the improved method provided in this embodiment includes: step S200, providing a substrate; step S202, performing surface modification on the substrate; and step S204, using a screen printing process, after surface modification Forming a patterned catalyst layer on the substrate; and step S206, using an electroless plating process, on the patterned catalyst layer A circuit layer is formed in place.

As shown in FIG. 5, in the step S200, the material of the substrate 10 can refer to the first embodiment, and thus no further details are provided herein. The difference between this embodiment and the previous embodiment is that the surface of the substrate 10 is modified in advance (ie, step S202); in the specific implementation, the surface of the substrate 10 can be activated by using a surface modifying agent, for example, for example, A negatively charged surface modifying layer 40 is formed on the surface of the substrate 10 to increase the adhesion between the surface of the substrate 10 and the palladium ions in the palladium catalyst. However, the surface modifying agent for activating the surface of the substrate 10 is not particularly limited. It is well known to those of ordinary skill in the art to which the invention pertains.

In step S204, the catalyst composition is printed on the surface modifying layer 40 by using a screen printing process, and then the catalyst composition can be heated into an patterned catalyst layer 20 by an oven; step S204 For the specific composition of the catalyst composition and the operating conditions of the screen printing and drying process, reference may be made to the first embodiment, and thus no further details are provided herein. In step S206, it is preferable to use a chemical copper process to simply convert the metal ions in the plating bath into a metal state by a catalytic action of a palladium catalyst, and to form a pattern in accordance with the redox method. A circuit layer is formed on the catalyst layer 20; in the step S206, the operating conditions of the chemical copper process can refer to the first embodiment, and thus are not described herein.

[Possible effects of the examples]

First, the improved method provided by the embodiment of the present invention firstly prints the catalyst material on the surface of the substrate by screen printing, and then performs circuit layout in this manner, and then uses electroless plating. The process design of directly reducing the metal on the catalyst to form the circuit layer can not only simplify the process, but also reduce the difficulty and complexity of the process technology, and greatly reduce the processing time and production cost of the circuit substrate, especially the process time. Only one-fourth of the screen printing process is used, and the quality of the circuit board is also ensured.

According to the above, the improved manufacturing method can be made into a circuit board having good electrical characteristics (such as As shown in Table 1, in particular, regardless of the complexity of the geometry of the substrate, the thickness of the plating on each surface of the substrate can be nearly uniform, so the uniformity of the wiring layer, the porosity is small and flexible.

Secondly, since the equipment used in the improved manufacturing method is easy to obtain, the purchase cost is low, and the roll-to-roll (R2R) manufacturing technology can be matched, it is suitable for industrial mass production.

Furthermore, the improved method can activate the surface of the substrate by using a surface modifier to form a negatively charged surface modifying layer on the surface of the substrate to increase the adhesion between the surface of the substrate and the palladium ions in the palladium catalyst. Improve process and product reliability.

The above is only an embodiment of the present invention, and is not intended to limit the scope of the invention. It is still within the scope of patent protection of the present invention to make any substitutions and modifications of the modifications made by those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.

1‧‧‧ circuit substrate

10‧‧‧Substrate

30‧‧‧Line layer

Claims (10)

An improved method for manufacturing a circuit substrate, comprising the steps of: providing a substrate; forming a patterned catalyst layer on the substrate by using a screen printing process; and using an electroless plating process, correspondingly on the patterned catalyst layer Form a circuit layer. The method for improving a circuit board according to claim 1, wherein the patterned catalyst layer has a thickness of 0.1 μm to 30 μm, and the patterned catalyst layer is formed by a catalyst composition, the touch The composition comprises a palladium catalyst and a hardener, and the hardener comprises from 1% to 10% of the catalyst composition. The method for improving a circuit board according to claim 2, wherein the hardener is selected from the group consisting of fatty amines, cyclic aliphatic amines, polyamines, aromatic amines, acid anhydrides, Lewis acids, and imidazoles. At least one of the agents, or a combination thereof. The method for improving a circuit substrate according to claim 2, wherein before the step of forming the patterned catalyst layer, further comprising surface modifying the substrate to increase palladium ions in the palladium catalyst Adhesion between the surfaces of the substrates. The method for improving a circuit substrate according to claim 2, wherein between the step of forming the patterned catalyst layer and the step of forming the wiring layer, further comprising performing a drying process to form the catalyst composition The patterned catalyst layer is patterned. The method of improving the circuit substrate according to claim 5, wherein the drying process is performed at a temperature between 60 ° C and 200 ° C. The method for improving the circuit substrate according to claim 1, wherein the reaction time of the copper plating process is from 5 mins to 500 mins, and the plating bath used in the copper plating process has a pH of from 9 to 14. The method for improving a circuit board according to claim 1, wherein the substrate is a plastic substrate, a ceramic substrate, or a glass substrate. The method for improving a circuit substrate according to claim 8, wherein the material of the plastic substrate is polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyurethane (PU), polyimine (PI), or polycarbonate ( PC) or acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene copolymer (ABS), the material of the ceramic substrate is alumina, zirconia or aluminum nitride, and the material of the glass substrate is epoxy glass fiber. The method for improving a circuit substrate according to claim 1, wherein the wiring layer has a thickness of 0.1 μm to 30 μm, and the material of the wiring layer is copper, nickel, aluminum, chromium, silver or gold.