Microelectronics Reliability 127 (2021) 114373

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Microelectronics Reliability
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/microrel

Alternative manufacturing process of 3-dimensional interconnect device

using thermoforming process
S. Zulfiqar a, A.A. Saad a *, M.F.M. Sharif a, Z. Samsudin b, M.Y.T. Ali b, F.C. Ani b, Z. Ahmad c, M.
K. Abdullah c
a
School of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 14300 Nibong Tebal, Penang, Malaysia
b
Jabil Circuit Sdn Bhd, Bayan Lepas Industrial Park, Penang, Malaysia
c
School of Materials and Mineral Resources Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 14300 Nibong Tebal, Penang, Malaysia

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: In early stages, the electronic circuits have been developed on simple printed circuit boards with multiple copper
Stretchable printed circuit patterns and components interconnected by lead – free solder. Later on, these are converted to flexible circuits
Thermoforming process and molded interconnect devices (MID) because of high demand of complex circuit design. Laser machine is used
Conductive ink
to manufacture 3D MID circuits. An alternative manufacturing process has been introduced in this research. The
Adhesive joint
method is to design functional circuits by using stretchable ink printed on a 2D substrate. Polycarbonate is
selected as a substrate on the basis of its glass transition temperature (Tg). Thermoforming process is then applied
to transfer 2D substrate into 3D shape. Reverse engineering technique is used to fabricate the mold through
several steps. First, the dimensions of rear lighting is calculated by coordinate measuring machine (CMM),
transferred to 3D drawing using SolidWorks. And finally the mold is produced using computer numerical control
(CNC) machine. Screen printing technique is opted to print ink on a flat thermoplastic Polycarbonate substrate.
The highly conductive circuit will be generated after heating printed ink in oven for about 30 min at 120 ◦ C. The
circuit with substrate is further transferred into 3D shape using the thermoforming process. All the light emitted
diodes (LEDs) are then fixed on a circuit by dispensing conductive adhesive and cured again in an oven for 10
min at 120 ◦ C, so strong bonds are formed at the joints. The reliability of the circuit is assessed by characterizing
mechanical and electrical properties. The designed circuit is then compared with the existing design using
scanning electron microscopy (SEM), universal testing, two-point probes multi-meter and spectrometer. The
electrical performance of new circuit design shows promising results in terms of power consumption and lu-
minous flux of LEDs and there is no major difference found between them. As a result, the new manufacturing
process of printed circuit offers encouraging method in manufacturing the automotive lighting product.

1. Introduction
Printed electronic devices have been manufactured using flat rigid
printed circuit boards (PCBs) and solder pastes to connect the electric
components on 2D PCBs either on one side or both sides. Since these
circuit boards have large electronic functions and low manufacturing
cost, therefore, they occupy a larger space area and become less
resourceful [1,2]. To address such problems, the electronic industry is
currently producing diverse 3D electronic circuit designs, employing
molded interconnecting devices (MIDs) technology to optimize the size
of the circuit and provide highly functional attractive designs. The de-
mand for these circuit designs, that are user friendly and of high quality,
has been gradually increasing in many electronic products [3–5] such as
epidermal electronics [6], flexible solar cells [7], diodes [8,9], sensors
[10], antennas [11–13], etc. Many automotive and medical industries
also require high-quality components like engine control [14–16],
audiological devices, hearing aid, and magnetic sensors [17].
The molded interconnecting device (MID), a 3D injection-molded–-
plastic circuit board, consists of an integrated metallic circuit traces
along with electrical and mechanical functions in a single assembly [18].
The process chain of MID is divided into two parts: injection molding
and fabrication process. MID circuits can be manufactured using
different methods such as 2 – shot injection molding, additive laser
direct structuring (LDS), laser subtractive structuring (LSS), mask

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: azizsaad@usm.my (A.A. Saad).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.microrel.2021.114373
Received 26 January 2021; Received in revised form 30 August 2021; Accepted 5 September 2021
Available online 28 September 2021
0026-2714/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
S. Zulfiqar et al.
lightening process, hot engraving, film back injection molding, metal-
lization process, printing techniques, and plasma structuring [19–21].
Among all of these methods, LDS and metallization processes are the
most widely used and flexible methods to produce MID circuits [22].
The high-resolution circuit traces on complex 3D MID can be produced
by the LDS technique. Initially, the injection molding process utilizes to
produce 3D parts of modified thermoplastic materials. The patterns of a
circuit are then constructed by the LDS method. The special additive
fillers like nano-particles of copper–oxide–chromite (5.3 g/cm3) are
mixed with thermoplastic materials before injection molding. When
laser rays strike the treated surface of material then additives are acti-
vated, and polymer bonds with metal oxide molecules are broken. After
that, the treated material is used as a basis for the metallization process.
The electroless copper plating bath is then used to remove the residues
formed soon after laser treatment and finally the desired product is
obtained.
However, the laser direct structuring (LDS) and in-mold labeling
(IML) technologies for the production of automobile parts such as LEDs
and signal devices have been evaluated, implemented, and assessed
using MIDs [23]. According to the previous studies, the LDS technique
has several drawbacks, including a long cycle time for automated pro-
cesses, low reflow production via vapor phase oven, the lower output of
3D parts and place machines, and lower lighting performance than
traditional flex–boards. As a result, the MID method is a very expensive
and time-consuming technique. An alternate technique for developing
3D circuits must be provided to the industries to minimize the size and
production time of printed circuits.
Another common and conventional technique for making complex
3D circuits is the thermoforming process. The thermoforming process is
a manufacturing process in which a thermoplastic sheet is converted
into a new shape by heating at high temperatures under high pressure
[24]. This process is most widely used in packaging applications like
medical equipment, food containers, and pharmaceutical products [25].
The thermoplastic polymers are only used as substrates in the thermo-
forming method. These polymers are amorphous, crystalline, or semi-
crystalline in nature [26]. The thermoplastic polymers undergo a
physical transformation from glassy to the rubbery state during the
heating process and the temperature obtained at this stage is called the
glass transition temperature. The amorphous polymers, such as poly-
carbonate (PC), are polymers that only go through this transition,
whereas, a crystalline or semi-crystalline polymer, such as polyethylene
terephthalate (PET), is formed when a rubbery polymer undergoes a
second physical transition from a rubbery state to a molten state. The
curved shape circuits can also be developed by thermoforming tech-
niques [27–30].Few pieces of literature on the thermoforming process in
stretchable circuits have been found in which the circuit was originally
integrated into a hard thermoplastic material and transformed into a 3D
shape via thermoforming process [31,32]. Before and after thermo-
forming, the electrical conductance of the circuit showed no significant
difference. However, the main advantage of using thermoforming pro-
cess rather than MID is that it requires low temperature and low pressure
for the process. The mold used in the process is cheap and can be easily
fabricated in a short time [26]. [33] also studied the thermoforming
process of stretchable circuits and its performance in the development of
electronic circuits of LEDs.
Despite these manufacturing methods, flexibility, elasticity, and
conductivity of the whole circuit also play a very important role in
designing stretchable electronic circuits. The stretchability of conduc-
tors can be increased by reducing the plastic strain in conductor strips.
[34] investigated the four types of conductor design; single line, rect-
angular pulse, horseshoe, and zigzag. As a result, the horseshoe type
conductor showed the highest stretchability, about 8% before failure
during tensile loading, than the elliptical and U–shaped conductors.
Similarly, the stretchability of circuits can be achieved when it is printed
on rubber-like substrates that have high elasticity. Elastomers are, thus,
used as substrates in the flexible and stretchable circuits because they
2
Microelectronics Reliability 127 (2021) 114373
have low elastic moduli w.r.t high deformation [35–39].
Various electronic components are linked together by different types
of interconnection materials, commonly named as solders. The most
commonly used solders are lead-free solder, lead-based solder, and
conductive adhesive or ink. The simplest material is lead-based solder
which works under low temperature and has fewer problems related to
its quality. However, according to the recent survey and the restriction
in law, the lead-based solder is no longer utilized by electronic industries
and declared as a toxic material. To address the new environmental and
ecological standards, lead-free solders and conductive adhesives are
now being employed [40,41]. The lead-free solder is not suitable for the
application of stretchable electronics circuits because it will harm the
whole circuit, particularly the solder linking system, due to its higher
melting temperature. To overcome such problem, an electrically
conductive adhesive (ECA) is used as an interconnection material be-
tween the components and the circuit. ECA is made up of an adhesive
epoxy and a conductive metal like silver, gold, copper, indium, or tin
oxide. It is applied in the form of paste on the circuit before placing
electronic devices and does not require any special pressure to cure. The
curing temperature of ECA ranges from 130 ◦ C to 180 ◦ C, due to which it
is also suitable for thermal-sensitive electronic components [42].
Among several conductive metals, silver has been chosen as an epoxy
filler by many researchers to form conductive patterns on stretchable
substrates like PDMS [39,43]. The conductivity of the pattern was
measured under a certain deformation rate. Silver is generally utilized as
a conductive material than copper and gold because gold is more
expensive, whereas, copper produces oxide compounds after exposure to
air. Additionally, the bulk resistivity of the silver is the lowest among all
the elements, that is 1.6 × 10−8 Ω m [44]. The advantage of using silver
rather than copper and gold is that it is cheap as compared to gold and
cannot produce oxides as copper after exposed to air.
Higher conductivity is a key feature of the printable stretchable
circuits and the conductivity also depends on curing and sintering pro-
cesses [45]. A good conductive pattern can be produced by a curing
process under a certain temperature and time. The conductive ink par-
ticles are heated at a certain temperature to produce interconnections
during the curing procedure and this process is called the sintering
process. The three common techniques of curing or sintering processes
used for printed conductive ink are a flashlight, laser treatment, and
thermal heating methods. The flashlight irradiation technique is used to
obtain the highly conductive ink with less porosity [46]. In the laser
treatment process, wavelength, scan speed and the number of scans with
the same energy supplied, affect the trace resistance [47]. As the number
of laser scan increases, the obtained resistance decreases and vice versa.
Most of the scientists used thermoplastic substrates in electronic devices
to study the curing and sintering of silver conductive ink. The thermo-
plastic substrates cannot bear high temperature, therefore, the silver
flakes and nanoparticles can be used as filler in polymers [48], silver
nanoparticles with poly (acrylic acid) (PAA) and cationic polymer, poly
(diallyl dimethylammonium chloride) (PDAC) [49] and silver nano-
plates rather than nanoparticles [8]. The resistivity of silver nano-
particles decreased at temperature ≤150 ◦ C [50] due to particles
densification and sintering.
As a matter of fact, the performance of conductive ink in stretchable
electronic circuits provides a vast area of research to scientists to
develop different techniques for producing electronic devices. Many
researchers worked on stretchable circuits using the thermoforming
process on polymer composites to shape the electronic product in
multidimensional [27]. However, very limited research has been con-
ducted on the applications of 3D interconnect automotive devices using
a thermoforming process. The objective of this research is to investigate
the impact of the thermoforming process on the stretchable conductive
ink of an LED circuit with a complex structure. The electrical and me-
chanical performances of the proposed prototype are evaluated by
measuring the electrical conductivity and pull strength of the circuit,
respectively. The evaluation results of the new design are compared with
S. Zulfiqar et al.
the existing automotive lighting design. Also, the surface morphology of
conductive film is examined using scanning electron microscopy (SEM).
The performance of the proposed prototype shows that the thermo-
forming process is appropriate for the manufacturing of automotive
lighting products.
2. Materials and methods
The printing process of conductive ink on a substrate mainly depends
on four steps: screen mesh and mold fabrication, preparation of
conductive ink, any printing method applied for printing, and lastly
curing of conductive ink at a certain temperature. The following section
describes the complete procedure of printing conductive ink on the
automotive lighting followed by the thermoforming process.
2.1. Screen mesh and mold fabrication
Screen mesh fabrication plays a very important role in producing a
printed circuit. It controls the amount of ink during penetration and
produces a uniform thickness on the surface of a substrate. In the present
study, SolidWorks software was used to design the 3D circuit pattern of
rear automotive lighting LED, whereas, the top view of the mold was
considered as a reference to estimate the other dimensions of the circuit.
The polyester was selected as a material with 74 number of mesh counts,
16 mm/N angle, 189 μm and emulsion thickness is of 120 μm. The mold
and circuit planes were arranged in parallel, and both designs were
examined in transparent mode with visible hidden lines. As illustrated in
Fig. 1(b), the circuit was constructed using the mold's visible lines.
The mold of an LED prototype was developed using reverse engi-
neering technique on basis of the commercially available LED as illus-
trated in Fig. 1(a). The coordinate measuring machine (CMM) was used
to measure the geometry of the model and moved to SolidWorks soft-
ware where already the CAD model was generated as depicted in Fig. 1
(b). After that, the computer numerical control (CNC) machine was
employed to fabricate the mold using aluminum block 6061 as shown in
Fig. 1(c). During the thermoforming process, the air bubbles might have
formed between the mold surface and the sheet, therefore, to avoid this
issue, multiple holes of 0.3 mm diameter were drilled beside the inner
corners of the geometry before undergoing thermoforming. Further-
more, these holes also helped in deforming the sheet according to the
mold's shape and size.
2.2. Selection of substrate
The two types of thermoplastic substrate were chosen for the ther-
moforming process: polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and
Fig. 1. (a) The original design of automotive lighting (b) schematic diagram of circuit pattern (c) fabricated mold for thermoforming process.
Microelectronics Reliability 127 (2021) 114373
polycarbonate (PC). The differential scanning calorimetry (DSC-Q20)
analysis was done to choose a better substrate based on the glass tran-
sition temperature (Tg) of respective substrates. Each material was cut
into small pieces by a cutter and weighed as 9.69 mg PET and 10.55 mg
PC. These samples, one by one, were placed on a sample pan of DSC
analyzer and heating started. The heating rate was set to 10 ◦ C/min with
a maximum temperature limit of 300 ◦ C. The substrate became very soft
due to excessive heating and caused folds, webbing, or wrinkles in the
thermoformed product [51]. PC sheet was selected as a substrate
because of its glass transition temperature and ability to withstand
higher temperatures during the manufacturing process. Finally, the
sheet was kept in an oven at 120 ◦ C for 30 min before undergoing the
thermoforming process to remove the moisture contents and air bubbles
from the surface of the substrate.
2.3. Printing and curing of conductive ink
The conductive ink was prepared using silver powder and butyl
carbitol. Before printing, the ink was organically brought to room
temperature for 1 h after being removed from the freezer. The ink was
put into a cup in the form of paste and weighed up to the appropriate
quantity. The paste was then dispensed at 2000 rpm for 30 s and dea-
erated in a Planetary Centrifugal Mixer (Thinky Mixer ARE-310) at
2200 rpm for further 30 s in order to create evenly dispersed silver flakes
and eliminate all of the bubbles from the ink.
The PC substrate sheet was placed on the printing machine (QM 4578
DEK printer) conveyor situated 5 mm beneath the screen mesh. The ink
was spilled on the screen in a direction that was perpendicular to the
pattern direction. The squeegee, with a speed of 15 mm/s, was allowed
to move across the screen so that open mesh apertures filled by the
conductive ink. Finally, conductive ink was transformed on the substrate
by reversing the squeegee at a pressure of 12 kg. The ink from the mesh
apertures was pulled out by passing the squeegee when the screen
sprang back at its original position. PC sheet with printed silver
conductive ink was then cured in an oven at 120 ◦ C for 30 min and
cooled at ambient temperature. Furthermore, the thermoforming pro-
cess was applied to get the 3D shape of automotive lighting.
2.4. Thermoforming process
After that, the thermoplastic sheet (PC) was clamped from the edges
in the thermoforming machine. The ceramic heaters 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 of
the thermoforming machine were set at 624 ◦ C, 650 ◦ C, 500 ◦ C, 425 ◦ C,
and 454 ◦ C, respectively. Both the substrate and circuit were heated at
150 ◦ C for 35 s to obtain a softening point with a distance of 60 mm
between heater and substrate. The heater was removed after heating and