PCB Tech - The rapid development of PCB circuit board industry

The output value of the world's top 40 manufacturers of PCB factories accounted for more than 60% of the entire industry, an increase of 15.9% compared to 2016, and they are constantly expanding their market share. Prismark predicts that the PCB industry will maintain steady growth in 2018, with an average annual compound growth rate of around 3.2% from 2017 to 2022.
The growth rate of China's PCB industry is slightly higher than that of the global PCB industry. Prismark predicts that China's PCB industry will grow by about 9.6% in 2017, with a compound annual growth rate of about 3.7% from 2017 to 2022. The trend of the global PCB industry shifting to Asia, especially China, remains unchanged. Prismark predicts that the output value of the PCB industry in China in 2017 will account for approximately 50.5% of the global output value in 2017, while Taiwan, South Korea and other parts of Asia will lag behind.
PCB in mainland China has a relatively mature industrial chain, and national policies are conducive to industrial development. The national "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" points out the need to accelerate the construction of a new generation of high-speed, mobile, and secure information infrastructure, whether it is the in-depth popularization of high-speed wireless networks, new energy vehicles, active promotion of intelligent manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and fifth-generation mobile communications ( 5G) and ultra-broadband related technology research, or the layout of the future network architecture, technical system and security system are inseparable from PCB products, so the internal growth momentum of China's PCB industry is still significant.
With the tighter supply of raw materials and stricter environmental protection policies in the Chinese PCB market, the threshold of the PCB industry is gradually increasing, and the industry concentration is increasing. Firms with strong strength will win more market space.

From the perspective of industrial development, in terms of product types, the global PCB industry is moving closer to high precision, high density and high reliability, continuously shrinking volume, reducing costs, improving performance, light weight and thinness, increasing productivity and reducing environmental impact. In order to adapt to the development of various downstream electronic terminal equipment industries, HDI, FPC, rigid-flex board and IC carrier board will become the key development direction of the industry in the future.
Due to the small size and size, there is almost no ready-made printed circuit board standard for the growing wearable IoT market. Before these standards came out, we had to rely on the knowledge and manufacturing experience learned in board-level development and think about how to apply them to unique emerging challenges. There are three areas that require our special attention. They are: circuit board surface materials, radio frequency/microwave design and radio frequency transmission lines.
PCB material
PCBs are generally composed of laminates, which may be made of fiber-reinforced epoxy resin (FR4), polyimide, or Rogers materials or other laminate materials. The insulating material between the different layers is called a prepreg.
Wearable devices require high reliability, so when PCB designers are faced with the choice of using FR4 (the most cost-effective PCB manufacturing material) or more advanced and more expensive materials, this will become a problem.
If wearable PCB applications require high-speed, high-frequency materials, FR4 may not be the best choice. The dielectric constant (Dk) of FR4 is 4.5, the dielectric constant of the more advanced Rogers 4003 series material is 3.55, and the dielectric constant of the brother series Rogers 4350 is 3.66.