Nan Ya PCB

Nan Ya Printed Circuit Board Corporation manufactures and sells printed circuit boards (PCBs) and IC substrates in Taiwan, Mainland China, Korea, and internationally. It offers conventional PCBs that are used in the motherboards of desktops and notebooks, and home electrical appliances; high density interconnection that are used in smartphones, game consoles, GPS, PDAs, automobile appliances, and MP3 players; and rigid-flex PCBs for use in high-end portable devices and notebooks. The company also provides flip chip substrates comprising pin/land grid arrays for microprocessors; and ball grid arrays for graphic microprocessors, northbridge chipsets, high-end ASIC chipsets, and set-top box chipsets. In addition, it offers wire bond substrates for MCP, southbridge chipsets, communication, and networking applications, as well as for use in memory, portable devices, handsets, consumer electronics, and PC peripheral device applications. The company was founded in 1997 and is headquartered in Taipei City, Taiwan. Nan Ya Printed Circuit Board Corporation is a subsidiary of Nan Ya Plastics Corporation.

Predecessors

Before the development of printed circuit boards, electrical and electronic circuits were wired point-to-point on a chassis. Typically, the chassis was a sheet metal frame or pan, sometimes with a wooden bottom. Components were attached to the chassis, usually by insulators when the connecting point on the chassis was metal, and then their leads were connected directly or with jumper wires by soldering, or sometimes using crimp connectors, wire connector lugs on screw terminals, or other methods. Circuits were large, bulky, heavy, and relatively fragile , and production was labor-intensive, so the products were expensive.

Development of the methods used in modern printed circuit boards started early in the 20th century. In 1903, a German inventor, Albert Hanson, described flat foil conductors laminated to an insulating board, in multiple layers. Thomas Edison experimented with chemical methods of plating conductors onto linen paper in 1904. Arthur Berry in 1913 patented a print-and-etch method in the UK, and in the United States Max Schoop obtained a patent to flame-spray metal onto a board through a patterned mask. Charles Ducas in 1925 patented a method of electroplating circuit patterns.Predating the printed circuit invention, and similar in spirit, was John Sargrove's 1936–1947 Electronic Circuit Making Equipment which sprayed metal onto a Bakelite plastic board. The ECME could produce three radio boards per minute.

Early PCBs

The Austrian engineer Paul Eisler invented the printed circuit as part of a radio set while working in the UK around 1936. In 1941 a multi-layer printed circuit was used in German magnetic influence naval mines.

Around 1943 the USA began to use the technology on a large scale to make proximity fuzes for use in World War II. Such fuzes required an electronic circuit that could withstand being fired from a gun, and could be produced in quantity. The Centralab Division of Globe Union submitted a proposal which met the requirements: a ceramic plate would be screenprinted with metallic paint for conductors and carbon material for resistors, with ceramic disc capacitors and subminiature vacuum tubes soldered in place. The technique proved viable, and the resulting patent on the process, which was classified by the U.S. Army, was assigned to Globe Union. It was not until 1984 that the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers awarded Harry W. Rubinstein the Cledo Brunetti Award for early key contributions to the development of printed components and conductors on a common insulating substrate. Rubinstein was honored in 1984 by his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for his innovations in the technology of printed electronic circuits and the fabrication of capacitors. This invention also represents a step in the development of integrated circuit technology, as not only wiring but also passive components were fabricated on the ceramic substrate.

Post-war developments

In 1948, the USA released the invention for commercial use. Printed circuits did not become commonplace in consumer electronics until the mid-1950s, after the Auto-Sembly process was developed by the United States Army. At around the same time in the UK work along similar lines was carried out by Geoffrey Dummer, then at the RRDE.

Motorola was an early leader in bringing the process into consumer electronics, announcing in August 1952 the adoption of "plated circuits" in home radios after six years of research and a $1M investment. Motorola soon began using its trademarked term for the process, PLAcir, in its consumer radio advertisements. Hallicrafters released its first "foto-etch" printed circuit product, a clock-radio, on 1 November 1952.Even as circuit boards became available, the point-to-point chassis construction method remained in common use in industry into at least the late 1960s. Printed circuit boards were introduced to reduce the size, weight, and cost of parts of the circuitry. In 1960, a small consumer radio receiver might be built with all its circuitry on one circuit board, but a TV set would probably contain one or more circuit boards.

Originally, every electronic component had wire leads, and a PCB had holes drilled for each wire of each component. The component leads were then inserted through the holes and soldered to the copper PCB traces. This method of assembly is called through-hole construction. In 1949, Moe Abramson and Stanislaus F. Danko of the United States Army Signal Corps developed the Auto-Sembly process in which component leads were inserted into a copper foil interconnection pattern and dip soldered. The patent they obtained in 1956 was assigned to the U.S. Army. With the development of board lamination and etching techniques, this concept evolved into the standard printed circuit board fabrication process in use today. Soldering could be done automatically by passing the board over a ripple, or wave, of molten solder in a wave-soldering machine. However, the wires and holes are inefficient since drilling holes is expensive and consumes drill bits and the protruding wires are cut off and discarded.

From the 1980s onward, small surface mount parts have been used increasingly instead of through-hole components; this has led to smaller boards for a given functionality and lower production costs, but with some additional difficulty in servicing faulty boards.

In the 1990s the use of multilayer surface boards became more frequent. As a result, size was further minimized and both flexible and rigid PCBs were incorporated in different devices. In 1995 PCB manufacturers began using microvia technology to produce High-Density Interconnect PCBs.

Recent advances

Recent advances in 3D printing have meant that there are several new techniques in PCB creation. 3D printed electronics can be utilized to print items layer by layer and subsequently the item can be printed with a liquid ink that contains electronic functionalities.

HDI technology allows for a denser design on the PCB and thus potentially smaller PCBs with more traces and/or components in a given area. As a result, the paths between components can be shorter. HDIs use blind/buried vias, or a combination that includes microvias. With multi-layer HDI PCBs the interconnection of several vias stacked on top of each other can be made stronger, thus enhancing reliability in all conditions. The most common applications for HDI technology are computer and mobile phone components as well as medical equipment and military communication equipment. A 4-layer HDI microvia PCB is equivalent in quality to an 8-layer through-hole PCB, so HDI technology can reduce costs.

We are committed to producing high quality and reliable printed circuit boards. Our mission is to offer our partners cutting-edge products and services, support innovative technology and manufacture high quality, reliable PCB products.

Our vision is to be the most trusted provider of printed circuit board solutions in the world. We want to create strong, long-term partnerships with our partners and strive to continuously create value added services and products.