flexible printed circuit (FPC)
Flexible Printed Circuit (FPC) are flexible printed circuit boards, so-called flex circuit boards. They are printed electronic circuits on flexible base material, which are flexible in different ways. Polyimide is used as the base material, but mostly polyester film coated with a thin layer of copper.
In the case of flexible printed circuit boards, the flexible base material is coated with a thin copper lamination, as in the case of printed circuit board manufacture. This is less than 10 micrometers thin. The bending radius is less than 1 mm. The conductor tracks and circuits are printed onto the flexible base material using a special ink, and the non-printed area is etched out. This preserves the traces for the electronic circuitry.
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Alternatively, conductive traces can be printed as printed electronics using conductive ink. The printed circuits can be applied to the substrate on one or both sides, but they can also be multilayer printed circuit boards. The conductor spacing can be less than 0.2 mm. In addition to single-sided flexible printed circuit boards, there are double-sided and also multilayer flexible printed circuit boards.
One area of application for flexible printed circuit boards is interconnect cables with FPC connectors, although these are more complex to manufacture in FPC technology than those in ladder design. Flexible printed circuit boards are also used in medical technology and automotive engineering, in telecommunications, sensor technology, mechanical engineering and aerospace.