High Speed Dispensing Solutions for Packaging and Manufacturing

摘要

Packaging is one of the key components for manufacturing of compact functional devices. Screen printing has been an important process for patterning a number of electronic devices, however, as the critical dimensions continue to shrink, this technology has been challenged by its accuracy and dimensionality. In order to solve this problem while keeping high productivity, nScrypt Inc. has developed high speed dispensing technology for packaging and manufacturing finer features such as conductive lines, resistors and dielectric insulators. As a through nozzle dispensing technology, the nozzle (tip) has been optimized to a conical shape, which reduces the pressure that is needed to extrude the material (e.g. paste) through the opening, thus enabling high speed dispensing. This technology can handle material from very low viscosities to high viscosities (several million centipoises). A large number of materials have been dispensed at several hundred mm/second, which qualifies it as high speed dispensing. To further enhance the speed, parallel dispensing has been employed and demonstrated in this paper. A height sensor, normally a laser based sensor, is integrated to acquire the z data for conformal and true 3D surface, which makes it possible to dispense on conformal and even true 3D surface. A novel pumping technology, which employs a special needle valve mechanism to control flow on and off ensures that material is accurately dispensed and placed in an x, y, z map. The needle valve technology enables pico-liter level volumetric control of the dispensed material. Micro resolution x, y and z stages are integrated to the system, which enables the precise placement of dispensed features. In the paper, dispensed micro dots, lines and patterns will be presented. In addition, 3D printing and high speed dispensing will be presented. This technology has various applications, including but not limited to, electronic packaging, manufacturing, solar industry, biomedical applications, electro optical applications and next generation hybrids.