You are on page 1of 8

Journal of Materials Processing Technology 213 (2013) 10951102

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Journal of Materials Processing Technology


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jmatprotec

Application of magnetic pulse welding technique for exible printed circuit boards (FPCB) lap joints
Tomokatsu Aizawa, Keigo Okagawa, Mehrdad Kashani
Tokyo Metropolitan College of Industrial Technology, 1-10-40, Higashi-Ohi, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 140-0011, Japan

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
The magnetic pulse welding (MPW) is a high speed solid state welding process which has been used successfully to provide metallurgical and electrical bonds between exible printed circuit board (FPCB) with using: (1) welding with aluminum driver sheet and (2) without driver sheet. The optimum bank energy for reliable bonding was about 1 kJ with 160180 kA maximum current. The maximum tensile shearing for most welded samples was nearly same as tensile shearing strength of copper layer of FPCB sheet. 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 6 September 2012 Received in revised form 26 November 2012 Accepted 10 December 2012 Available online xxx Keywords: Magnetic pulse welding (MPW) Solid state bonding Flexible printed circuit board (FPCB)

1. Introduction Modern electronic devices are required to be thin, lightweight and functionally sophisticated. Therefore, joining thin exible printed circuit board (FPCB) in different shapes is receiving attention. FPCB and exible cables constructed from polyester or polyimide lm and such lms are lightweight, exible and thin. Varying circuit shapes, dimensions, circuit arrangements and different length cable arrangements may be constructed using FPCB. However, a disadvantage to the use of FPCB is the bonding problems. Yoon et al. (2007) studied bonding characteristics of FPCB using solder method and reported high electrical and mechanical properties, while the excessive growth of intermetallic compounds at the joint interface signicantly degrades the performance and reliability of the solder joint. Maruo et al. (2004) investigated adhesive-bonding methods using anisotropic conductive adhesive or non-conductive adhesive for FPCB bonding but experimental results show poor electrical property and low mechanical reliability in joint interfaces. Unfortunately, the conventional boding methods for FPCB do not appear to provide an economical and reliable solution to interconnection and construction challenges. The magnetic pulse welding (MPW) provides an excellent and high speed method for achieving FPCB lap-joint. MPW uses magnetic pressure to drive the primary metal against the target metal sweeping away surface contaminants while forcing intimate metal-to-metal contact, thereby producing a solid-state weld. Several technical

Corresponding author. Tel.: +81 47 375 7796; fax: +81 47 375 7795. E-mail address: kashani@asrl.org (M. Kashani). 0924-0136/$ see front matter 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmatprotec.2012.12.004

research papers has been reported about MPW for example Tamaki and Kojima (1988) and Shribman et al. (2002) used conventional MPW method with solenoidal coil for joining tubular parts and investigated its feature. MPW has been theorized and tested for several decades, but equipment limits the total energy stored and this keeps weld lengths to the order of meters or less. Recently, MPW application rapidly growing in industrial application and new development make MPW method well suited for manufacture and assembly in wide range of application. Shribman and Gafri (2001) introduced MPW technique for tube to tube applications. They studied the fundamental equations of MPW process and illustrated some examples of similar and dissimilar weld applications with some interface microstructures. Uhlmann et al. (2005) also studied the applicability and the potentials of MPW for joining of aluminum and magnesium structure which is a new solutions for modern lightweight structures applications. Daehn and Lippold (2009) also proposed a new MPW device and developed it for similar or dissimilar thin sheet metal joints application. Recently, several works also were carried out on application of MPW technique in electronics micro-devices. For example, Kashani et al. (2008, 2009) developed a new low energy MPW system which can be used for bonding of wire to terminal plate in electronic devices or making small Copper and Manganin alloys joint as a shunt resistor for using at control circuits. The goal of this work was to introduce new low energy system with modied coil structure for using MPW technique in FPCB lap-joints application which has not been reported before. The present paper examines the detail of the welding process and welds quality characteristics for FPCB lap-joints in two cases: (1) with aluminum driver sheet and (2) without aluminum driver sheet.

1096

T. Aizawa et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 213 (2013) 10951102

Fig. 2. Principle of welding process in case of using Al driver sheet: (a) before welding and (b) after welding.

Fig. 1. Principle of MPW technique.

2. Principle of MPW Magnetic pulse welding (MPW) uses electromagnetic force to accelerate one metal piece (base metal) against another stationary metal piece (target sheet). When a high magnetic eld B is suddenly generated and penetrated into metal sheets, then the eddy currents (current density i) pass through them and as a result, an electromagnetic force of F = i B acts mainly on the base metal sheet and it is accelerated away from the coil and collides rapidly with the target metal sheet. The eddy current i and the magnetic pressure p are given as following:

i =
p=
2 B2 ) (Bo i

B t =
2 Bo 2

(1) (1 e2x/ )

2 2

(2)

attained during this process range from 200 m/s to 500 m/s and the joining process completed within microsecond. Because of the short impact period, the extent of heating might be minimal along the joints. Therefore, comparing to the traditional fusion welding process, no signicant heat affected zones is produced in MPW joints and it can be noticed as a main advantage (Aizawa and Yoshizawa, 2001; Aizawa and Kashani, 2004). Kakizaki et al. (2010) found that the surface oxide of the metal interfaces is disrupted due to the jet action and metallurgical bonding is achieved between clean surfaces. As shown in Fig. 1, the principle of MPW technique can be summarized into three steps: (1) producing high magnetic eld, (2) acceleration of base metal, and (3) impaction and bonding. In the present experiment which has been carried out for FPBC lap-joints application, the base and target metals are thin and light and the skin depth is comparable with thickness of the FPBC copper layer. Therefore, the impaction is weaker in comparing with thick metal welding case. In this case, using Al driver sheet can increase the electromagnetic force and magnetic pressure. The impaction of Aluminum driver sheet with FPCB layers can make a solid state bonding between FPCB sheets. Fig. 2 shows the principle of welding process with using the Al driver sheet. The result of second experiment without using Al driver sheet also is reported in this paper for better comparison. 3. Experimental setup The block diagram of the discharge system is shown in Fig. 3 which is consisted of a capacitor bank (C) and a spark gap switch (G) with a one layer E-shaped at coil. For optimizing the weld quality, three capacitor banks with different energy storage capacity were used in present experimental setup. The capacitor banks (CB) descriptions were summarized in Table 1. The capacitor bank is connected to the gap-switch and one-turn coil by a low inductance transmission line. 3.1. General outlines of apparatus Fig. 4 shows the general outlines of the magnetic pulse welding apparatus. The coil was made by CrCu alloy. The main discharge

andk

1 = LC

(3)

where , , , Bo and Bi are the electrical conductivity, magnetic permeability, thickness, the magnetic ux density at lower and upper surfaces of Al sheet, respectively. The depth of skin effect () can be obtained by calculation of angular frequency () and it is governed by the complete MPW systems inductivity L and its capacity C. The skin depth becomes important parameter specially for thin sheet metal bonding process. When the thickness of the base sheet metal is the same as the skin depth, then magnetic pressure equals 86% of its maximum value and it reaches 98% when the base metal thickness is twice of the skin depth. The appropriate skin depth and higher magnetic pressure can be adjusted by the frequency of the discharge current. At the moment of collision the colliding surfaces can be cleaned by a large kinetic energy getting before the collision. The velocities

T. Aizawa et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 213 (2013) 10951102

1097

Fig. 3. Block diagram of discharge system and appearance of discharge circuit.

Table 1 Electrical characteristics of MPW capacitor bank. CB1 Charging voltage (kV) Capacitor bank (F) Total energy (kJ) Residual inductance (nH) 13.5 12 (2 6 F) 1.1 20 CB2 9.1 24 (4 6 F) 1.0 15 CB3 6.3 50 (2 25 F) 1.0 20

electromagnetic force to Al driver sheet for rapid collision with FPCB and producing a solid state boding. 3.2. FPCB sample A typical FPCB samples and its dimensional size which were used in present experiment are shown in Fig. 5a. Three types of FPCB sheet (W1, W5 and W10) which almost is used in industrial applications was chosen in present experiment. The size of FPCB sheet is 40 mm 40 mm and the width of copper rows are 1 mm, 5 mm and 10 mm for W1, W5 and W10, respectively. The cross section view of all FPCB sheet layers are same and are shown in Fig. 5b. The total thickness of FPCB is about 110 m and the polyimide lm layer cover only 30 mm of copper foil and 10 mm of that is uncoated (welding zone). 4. Experimental results and discussion 4.1. Current signal and collision speed All three different capacitor banks system (CB1, CB2 and CB3) was tested to get the optimum results. The best results were obtained with CB2 system. The minimum joule heating effect and also smallest deformation on FPCB sheets was observed by CB2 system which had a lower total inductance and faster discharge. Typical current waveform (top signal) and also the signal of collision speed circuit (bottom signal) for CB2 system are shown in Fig. 6. This current signal was obtained at 1.0 kJ discharge by using a magnetic probe. The current signal shows that a damping and oscillating current ows through a one-turn coil for the duration of about 50 s and the discharge frequency was about 133 kHz. The maximum current and maximum magnetic ux density were measured about 160 kA and 23 T at 1.0 kJ discharge in case of using Al driver sheet. The maximum magnetic pressures were calculated by Eq. (2) and it was about 200 MPa for the same discharge. In order to measure the time of collision and also the collision speed of the aluminum driver sheet just before welding, very simple circuit is prepared to measure the time traveling of the base metal in gap distance which is exist between two FPCB sheets before welding. The detail of this circuit is reported in pervious work (Aizawa et al., 2007). The time between starting discharge and nal phase of welding was approximately about 1.7 s and the maximum collision speed of Al driver sheet just before welding is calculated to be 380 m/s. 4.2. Effect of gap between FPCB sheets before welding

current pass through the middle part of coil and the width of this part was designed to be 2.5 mm and length of 40 mm. The thickness of E-shaped coil was 2 mm and its inductance was measured about 0.039 H. The thickness of Al driver was 0.3 mm with size of 50 mm 50 mm. The skin depth for a typical discharge in this Al driver sheet was calculated by Eq. (2) and it was about 0.22 mm. This value is enough to prevent of melting of FPCB and apply big

Fig. 4. General outlines of apparatus: (a) plan view of coil geometry and discharge circuit; CB, capacitor bank; G, gap switch. (b) Cross section view of the coil-containing lap of FPCB sheets with Al driver sheet.

The collision speed has a relation with the bank energy and the discharge current and the maximum collision speed can be

1098

T. Aizawa et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 213 (2013) 10951102

Fig. 5. Typical FPCB samples which were used in present experiment:(a) width of copper rows are 1 mm, 5 mm and 10 mm for W1, W5 and W10 sheet, respectively; and (b) cross section of FPCB sheet with fabrication material layer thickness.

obtained at the rst maximum in the current signal. Therefore, by inserting the appropriate gap distance between sample sheets, the collision time can be nearly same as quarter period of the current signal at the rst maximum current peak. The optimum gap distance has relation with the capacitor bank energy and the discharge system inductance. However, our experimental result shows that 0.4 mm, gap distance between FPCB sheets is necessary for achieving high weld quality. On other hand, the surfaces of FPCB sheet can be melted because of high Eddy current and increasing of Joule heating effect in case of samples without inserting gap between them (Fig. 7).

4.3. Microstructure of joined interface Fig. 8 shows the lap-joints of three types of FPCB sheets. The width of the weld zone was nearly equal to the middle part of the coil (b = 2.5 mm). The welded area has concentrated into two lines with 0.6 mm wideness along of middle part of coil and no heat affected area was observed in polyimide substrate. The lap-joints of W5-FPCB and W10-FPCB sheets divided to several parts for the optical microscope observations and also for shearing strength test. The divided test parts were polished for observing the joined interface. Fig. 9 shows the optical microscope images of the welded area. These optical images show the welded zone was formed in two parts with approximately 2 mm apart. The pictures show a wavy transition layer without any signicant heat-affected zone or any crack on copper layer is formed in welded zone. The scanning ion microscopic (SIM) image of welding interface also shows a negrain microstructure at interface layer. 4.4. Electrical resistances of lap-joints The electrical resistance of FPCB lap-joint was measured by a digital micro-ohmmeter using KELVIN-TYPE (4-WIRES) method. The measurement setup was shown in Fig. 10. It is necessary to remove polyimide lms and adhesive materials from welded sample before resistance measurement. The micro-ohmmeter probes should be connected near lap-joint on copper sheet. The bonding resistance of FPCB lap-joints was measured less than 10 for W5 samples and this value is enough low for micro electronic applications. 4.5. Tensile shear test Welded samples were investigated on a standard tensile shear testing machine at test rate of 10 mm/min. The tensile shearing strength of each welded samples (W1, W5 and W10) were measured and compared with results of no-welded samples (Fig. 11).

Fig. 6. Typical current signal at 1.0 kJ discharge (top signal) and the signal of collision time (bottom signal).

T. Aizawa et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 213 (2013) 10951102

1099

Fig. 7. Typical FPCB samples (E = 1.0 kJ; I = 200 kA; driver: 0.3 mm Al sheet): (a) without gap and (b) with 0.4 mm gap.

Fig. 8. Lap-joints of W1, W5 and W10-FPCB sheets sample.

Based on the shearing strength test results, it can be obtained that the maximum tensile shearing of welded sample is little smaller than tensile shearing strength of no-welded FPCB sheet. The maximum tensile shearing for most welded samples was nearly same as tensile shearing strength of copper layer of FPCB sheet and failure always occurred near of welded line (Fig. 12). 4.6. Comparison of results for two cases The feasibility of MPW technique without using Aluminum driver sheet was investigated and compared with result of Al driver case. In this case, the skin depth is higher than the thickness of the copper layer in FPCB sheet and it is necessary to adjust the appropriate current discharge frequency and increase the total bank energy for obtaining enough high magnetic pressure comparing with using Al driver case. However, the maximum current should be limited to prevent from melting of thin copper layer of FPCB sheet. Several modications should be considered for reliable welding without using Al driver sheet. The width of middle part of coil was modied to 1 mm to improve eddy current paths and concentration of the magnetic pressure in small area of copper layer. The thickness of coil also was increased to 10 mm for improving the lifetime of coil against mechanical shock of discharge pulse. The maximum discharge current and the maximum of magnetic ux density at 1.1 kJ discharge were measured about 180 kA and 30 T, respectively. The maximum magnetic pressures were calculated about 143 MPa for the same discharge. The maximum tensile shearing was obtained about 110120 N for successful welded samples which is a little

Table 2 Comparison of the typical results and welding process parameters for two cases: (1) with Al driver; (2) without Al driver. With Al driver sheet Bank capacitance (F) Bank inductance (H) Coil inductance (H) Total inductance (H) Charging energy (kJ) Charging voltage (kV) Max. current (kA) Coil dimension (see Fig. 4) Discharge current frequency (kHz) Collision time (s) Maximum collision speed (m/s) Max. magnetic ux density (T) Max. magnetic pressure (MPa) Al driver thickness (mm) Skin depth (mm) Gap distance (mm) Bonding resistance ( ) Average tensile strength (N) 24 (4 6 F) 0.018 0.041 0.059 1.0 9.1 160 a = 40 mm; b = 2.5 mm; t = 2 mm 133 1.7 380 23 200 0.3 0.22(Al driver sheet) 0.4 10 130140 Without Al driver sheet 12 (2 6 F) 0.021 0.032 0.053 1.1 13.5 180 a = 60 mm; b = 1 mm; t = 10 mm 200 1.5 330 30 143 0.15(Cu layer of FPCB) 0.4 10 110120

1100

T. Aizawa et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 213 (2013) 10951102

Fig. 9. Optical microscope and SIM images of the welded area in FPCB lap-joint.

T. Aizawa et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 213 (2013) 10951102

1101

Fig. 10. Bonding resistance measurement for FPCB lap-joint using KELVIN-TYPE (4-WIRES) method.

smaller than Al driver case. The wavy transition pattern was not so clear in optical microscope observations in this case. For a better comparison of results in both cases, the other typical results and welding process parameters are summarized in Table 2. 5. Summary and conclusions In this work, MPW process was investigated for FPCB lap-joint application in two cases: (1) with Al driver; (2) without Al driver and the main results are summarized a follows: FPCB sheet can be successfully welded in both cases and the optimum bank energy for reliable bonding was about 1.01.1 kJ. The welded area in FPCB lap-joint has concentrated into two lines with 0.6 mm wideness along of middle part of coil. The welded zone has a good joint quality without any damage or heat affect in polyimide substrates of FPCB. The deformation of lap-joint is also small for welded samples using Al driver sheet. The maximum tensile shearing was obtained around 110140 N for successful welded samples for both cases and it was nearly same as tensile shearing strength of copper layer of FPCB sheet The gap distance between FPCB sheets before welding has very important effect on welding quality and its optimum was 0.4 mm. The optical microscope and SIM images of the welded area also show that transition layer was formed without any signicant heat-affected zone (HAZ). But the wavy transition layer was formed only for samples which were made by using Al driver sheet and this wavy structure was not clear for lap-joint samples without using Al driver sheet. Application of MPW process without using driver sheet may be restricted to a particular type of FPCB sheet because of many limitations for adjusting eddy current, magnetic pressure and skin depth in very thin copper layer of FPCB sheet. It can be conclude this case is more applicable for FPCB sheets with thicker copper layer. Acknowledgments The authors wish to express thanks to Mr. K. Hanasaki and Mr. Y. Sugiyama of Yazaki Corporation for the observation of joined interfaces. References
Aizawa, T., Kashani, M., 2004. Proc. of IIW International Conference on Technical Trends and Future Prospective of Welding Technology for Transportation, Land, Sea, Air and Space , Osaka, p. 378. Aizawa, T., Yoshizawa, M., 2001. Proc. of 7th Int. Symposium of Japan Welding Society , pp. 295300. Aizawa, T., Kashani, M., Okagawa, K., 2007. American Welding Journal (AWJ) 86 (5), 119124. Daehn, G.S., Lippold, J.C., 2009. Low Temperature Spot Impact Welding Driven Without Contact. US Patent PCT/US09/36299. Kakizaki, S., Watanabe, M., Kumai, S., 2010. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference of Aluminum Alloys (ICAA12) , pp. 945949.

Fig. 11. Tensile strength of welded and no welded samples.

Fig. 12. Typical rupture of FPCB lap-joint sample which made by using Al driver sheet.

1102

T. Aizawa et al. / Journal of Materials Processing Technology 213 (2013) 10951102 Tamaki, K., Kojima, M., 1988. Factors affecting the result of electromagnetic welding of aluminum tube. Transactions of the Japan Welding Society 19 (1), 5359. Uhlmann, E., Hahn, R., Jurgasch, D., 2005. Pulsed-magnetic hot joiningnew solution for modern lightweight structures. Steel Research International 76 (2), 245250. Yoon, J.W., Chun, H.S., Koo, J.M., Lee, H.J., Jung, S.B., 2007. Scripta Materialia 56, 661.

Kashani, M., Aizawa, T., Okagawa, K., Hanasaki, K., 2008. Proc. of 8th Int. Welding Symposium , Kyoto, Japan, p. 9. Kashani, M., Aizawa, T., Okagawa, K., 2009. IEICE Technical Report 109 (287), 2931. Maruo, H., Seki, Y., Unami, Y., 2004. Proc. HDP04 IEEE , p. 307. Shribman, V., Gafri, O., Livshitz, Y., 2001. Magnetic Pulse Welding & JoiningA New Tool for the Automotive Industry, SAE Technical Paper 2001-01-3408, 2001, http://dx.doi.org/10.4271/2001-01-3408 Shribman, V., Stern, A., Livshitz, Y., Gafri, O., 2002. Magnetic pulse welding produces high-strength aluminum welds. Welding Journal, 3337.

You might also like