Inkjet Printed Circuit Boards?

I was reading about the technology that Epson used to create a printed circuit board using a specialized inkjet technology and alternating conductive/insulating inks. I originally read an article in Maximum PC over two months after the Epson press release. So...perhaps it's not as newsworthy as one would immediately presume. At least not to PCB insiders.

Anyways, it is quite interesting, and people who know little about the PCB industry think it is this incredibly enabling new technology. It may be, but I'm a bit skeptical. Haven't three or four other "advanced" additive type processes been introduced in the last fifteen or so years? I seem to recall a company in Dallas that had a machine that would lay down actual insulated wires on a substrate. I worked on some software that converted Gerber files into files that could drive that machine. Also very interesting technology, and I remember thinking "why can't we just print with conductive ink?". This was around 1995 or so, I think...I wonder if they're still around.

This technology certainly may lead to some interesting developments, but there are some unanswered questions for sure. For example, what is the current carrying capacity of the circuits? Also, how does one affix components to the thing? Remember that with a circuit board, the circuits only exist to provide connections between the components, and the board only exists to have something for the components to stick to. To people who do not make their living in the bare-board industry, the board itself is not terribly interesting (unless of course its a video card with black soldermask and flourescent yellow letterscreen :). It is the components that are interesting. They are the flashy ones, the attention getters. The GPU and 12 memory pipes are the star quarterback and wide receiver on a hot new video card. The PCB is more like the offensive linemen. It just kind of holds all the stuff together, and fits into that AGP or PCI Express slot.

I wonder if they can control circuit impedences? Maybe they can develop ink with differing dielectric constant. Maybe like a standard color inkjet cartridge, with three different dielectric materials, and they can spray it on in differing quantities to get the right DK, kind of like how an inkjet does color mixing. Or maybe they could build up dielectric with multiple passes. Or perhaps even add specific DK to the conductor itself.

While reading the article, I realized that someone should tell Epson about Laser Direct Imaging. They seem to make quite a big deal out of the fact that the inkjet technology doesn't need "photomasks" (they must mean phototools ;)

Something I noticed in the Epson press release, their research was funded by a Japanese government agency, whose ultimate goal is apparently " ... to bring about the realization of a ubiquitous computing society." So, I'm looking for a farm in North Dakota...