Flexible Circuit Technology, Third Edition (Repost)

This book was written to provide a bridge of understanding by offering a clearly defined set of steps which take the reader from basic concepts of flexible circuits to a more detailed review of the various technology and materials that must be brought together to create these modern wonders of electronic interconnection wizardry.

From the author:
This is the Third Edition of Flexible Circuit Technology, an updated and significant expansion over the previous editions. Achieving third edition status based on demand extends credence that flexible circuits are of continuing value and enduring interest. Recalled here is the opening sentence to the very first edition: "The flexible circuit has been at the head of a quiet revolution in the world of electronic packaging, a revolution that has gone largely unnoticed, lost in the excitement of continued advances in semiconductor technology." Much has changed in the decade since those words were first written for this book. Flexible circuit technology is now squarely in the sights of circuit designers around the globe and, even with the bursting of the dot com bubble, it has held fast and, in fact, the flex circuit market actually grew while other interconnection-technology markets receded.

Flexible circuits are now a key enabling technology for products ranging from simple consumer goods to spacecraft. They are critical elements in such diverse products as medical equipment, keyboards, hard disk drives, printers and cellular phones. Every day, flexible circuit technology opens doors to new opportunities for engineers and product and system designers to make a complete transition to the third dimension of interconnection. Short of wireless interconnections, flexible circuits also continue to provide the very best and most practical solutions to interconnecting electronic elements that must move relative to each other. These two important features — motion and three-dimensional interconnection — remain at the top of the list of key attributes of flexible circuits; however, there is much more on the horizon and more yet to come in the years beyond, with flexible circuit technology now opening new doors to the realm of high speed in the budding era of higher performance at reduced power.