The year 2019 will be memorable in the PCB business. We saw clear signs that traditional large rigid PCB design, assembly, and manufacturing technologies certainly maintained their status quo. But a new breed of OEM customer kept pushing the envelope in 2019. Those PCB projects are best characterized as considerably smaller PCBs with a majority involving matchbook size rigid and rigid-flex circuits, bare die, and wire bonding.
As we move into 2020, this new breed of OEM PCB customer requires such technologies as flip chip, chip on board (CoB), and wire bonding, meaning wire bonding connecting bare die onto a substrate or small rigid or rigid-flex circuit. In effect, our industry is moving from traditional SMT PCB manufacturing to PCB hybrid manufacturing, which combines both traditional SMT manufacturing and microelectronics manufacturing.
Based on recent industrial, medical, mil/aero, and computer OEM customer requirements, the trend today is for a combination of traditional SMT manufacturing and the growing popularity of microelectronics/wire bonding manufacturing used to perform bare die attach/wire bonding on the PCB. This new PCB manufacturing discipline is gaining traction because OEMs continue to require smaller PCBs and packaging. Bare die attach and wire bonding are required in smaller PCBs where real estate is at a premium. However, in a number of cases, SMT manufacturing of that PCB is first performed followed by microelectronics/wire bonding manufacturing.
