A Novel Method for Component Positioning in Thermoformed Electronics

Abstract

Curve-shaped electronics have been on the rise in recent years. One crucial challenge in this area is reproducibility, which means in the different fabricated samples, the position of the electronic components should be the same. This paper aims to present a reliable approach for accurate component positioning in thermoformed electronics. We have proposed a non-stretchable conductive structure for accurate positioning of the electronic components, which can assure the conductive routes' mechanical stability during lamination and thermoforming of the substrate. We have verified our approach's accuracy by applying our method on a real industrial luminaire mold for positioning six LEDs in the center of the luminaire parts. We have measured the LEDs' position after thermoforming to prove the design's repeatability. The experiment results state that the proposed method is capable of positioning electronic components in thermoformed 3D electronics and 400% improvement is reported in comparison with the previous fabrication approaches.