Moulded interconnect device fabrication by two shot molding and lasert induced selective activation

This report on the project “Molded Interconnect Device (MID) by two shot injection molding and laser induced selective activation” has been submitted to fulfil the requirements for the master project at department of Manufacturing Engineering and Management of Technical University of Denmark (IPL-DTU). MID is defined as an injection molded plastic substrate with electrical infrastructures on the surface and integrates both mechanical and electrical functionalities on the single device. This paper describes many aspects of MID such as the background information, manufacturing process chain, comparative process analysis, applications and specially two shot injection molding and laser induced selective activation in the MID area. There is also an experimental part which contains fabrication of a MID demonstrator, selective metallization as well as characterization. The realization of molded interconnect device was achieved with two innovative processes such as two shot injection molding which combines platetable and none-platetable thermoplastics, and laser induced selective activation which uses a laser to draw circuit on the thermoplastic surface containing laser sensitive additive. Different material combinations such as PEI (GE Ultem 1000) +PPO (GTX 810) and PEEK (Victrex 150GL30) +PPO (GTX 810) were investgated which can be selected electroless plating for metallization. Several plastics such as PC (GE Lexan 500R) and PEEK (Victrex 150GL30) were applied to the laser induced activation and reacted differently with the diverse structure.