Directly printed standing ceramic circuit boards for rapid prototyping of miniaturization and high-power of electronics.

Abstract

Ceramic circuit boards (CCBs) have been extensively utilized in 5G communications, aerospace, and artificial intelligence due to their excellent thermal conductivity and electrical performance. However, due to the limitation of manufacturing technologies, the existing CCBs can not take into account both the resolution and thickness, which restricts the miniaturization and high power of the resulting electronics. Herein, we report a standing-CCBs (S-CCBs) with both high-resolution and high aspect-ratio fabricated via sacrificial coating-assisted micro-3D printing. Benefiting from this technique, S-CCBs can be easily printed as a tall and thin-walled structure without landslides and sintered to be highly conductive wire with an overall shrinkage on the rough ceramic substrates, achieving a line width of 7 µm and aspect-ratio of 2.3 on various ceramic substrates (Al₂O₃, AlN, and ZrO₂) with conductivity of 5.1 × 10⁷ S m^-1. Such circuits also possess environmental compatibility under mechanical tests (1000 adhesion test and scratch test) and harsh environments (500 °C aging for 500 h and chemical attack for 500 h). The proposed technique free from traditional lithography, etching, and plating processes opens up a promising strategy of implementing both high-density integration and large current-carrying capacity.