November 6, 2022
has developed dedicated equipment and processes for the purpose of the tiny assembly. The two-layer card includes 21 active and passive components, for a computerized implant for continuous monitoring of heart activity
In the picture above: the PCB board that includes 16 circuits before the assembly stage
The central Nistec factory in Petah Tikva (Nistec) succeeded in assembling a miniature electronic circuit with two layers on a PCB board with a thickness of only 0.05 mm. The company’s VP of marketing and sales, Arbel Nissan, told Techtime that this is probably one of the thinnest circuits in the world. “The thickness of a standard circuit is 1.6 mm – which is 32 times thicker. I checked several industrial publications about achievements in the field of thin circuits and all of them reported circuits at least ten times thicker. In fact, it is a circle with a thickness similar to that of an A4 paper.”
It is a fully flexible circuit that is used as a miniature wireless medical implant, which is inserted through a catheterization process into the patient’s heart, and is used as a small computer that continuously monitors the heart’s function, with the aim of helping patients suffering from chronic heart failure, which is one of the most common causes of death in the Western world. The assembled circuit is 25 mm long and 2.5 mm wide, and includes 21 passive and active electronic components in sizes 01005 and 0201 assembled on both sides.
Arbel: “The customer contacted us during the circuit design phase and on the recommendation of the factory technologist, several design changes were made to adapt the board to the production line. At the same time, we designed a dedicated maintenance facility that is created for the card, in a way that allows it to be connected to the SMT machines, and to stretch the circuit to maintain its stability and allow the tin paste to be applied accurately over the surface of the circuit.” The chief technologist at the Nistec plant in Petah Tikva, Michael Schneider, said: “We accompanied the challenging project even at the circuit design stage, we built an orderly plan for the assembly process with several stages and measured the performance of each stage separately.”
“Applying the solder paste on the circuit was the most complex challenge we had to face, due to the high flexibility and instability of the circuit in the production line.” Nissan: “We had to provide the customer with a very fast technological solution, in light of the high interest and demand from its customers. We managed to deliver several hundreds of cards (prototypes) for this innovative and important product.”
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