AdITR technology employs conductive adhesives

As products become more compact, the number of components with a low tolerance for heat has increased and the need for high-density surface mounting has grown. However, it is difficult to realise high-density mounting at low temperatures using conventional mounting methods such as solder or conductive adhesives.

Solder mounting can achieve high densities, but it requires high temperatures (200 degrees C or more). Thus, any components with a low tolerance for heat need to be mounted separately. On the other hand, conventional conductive adhesives can be used at 170 degrees C, but they have a minimum printing distance between lines of 1.0 mm. This means they cannot be used to print fine patterns and are therefore not suitable for high-density surface mounting.

Now, there's a solution to the problem. Matsushita Electric has developed a new surface mounting technology that uses conductive adhesives. Called AdITR (Adhesive Interconnection Technology), it allows high-density surface mounting to be carried out at significantly lower temperatures than solder, making it applicable to components with low resistance to heat.

AdITR is claimed to be superior both to conventional solder mounting and previous conductive adhesives. The newly developed conductive adhesive is cured at low temperatures around 150 degrees C, so it can be used to mount modules incorporating temperature-sensitive elements, such as the camera lenses employed in some mobile phone handsets. It is also suitable for highly precise high-density mounting since the minimum printing distance between lines is 0.2 mm.

AdITR also provides environmental advantages too since it doesn't use any toxic substances such as lead or VOC (volatile organic compounds). And since it uses no flux there is no need for a separate cleaning process to remove solder residue. Finally, AdITR can also be combined with solder mounting since the conductive adhesives used do not remelt at the reflow soldering temperature. This means that a module made using AdITR can be mounted onto a circuit board or another module using solder mounting.