Summary of Technological Gaps in Taiwan's PCB Industry
TPCA (Taiwan Circuit Board Association) released the blueprint for the development of PCB industry technology in Taiwan in 2019. The new version of 2019 was greatly adjusted with the development of terminal product technology. It added SLP and COF. It also followed up and analyzed the four major technical gaps of PCB in Taiwan in terms of reliability, 5G materials, manufacturing and processing and equipment requirements.
TPCA has structured Taiwan's PCB industry technology development blueprint since 2013, and regularly updates survey prospective technologies and trends every two years. The new version of 2019 has been greatly adjusted with the development of terminal product technology, including Class Plate (SLP) and COF. Class SLP was originally only used by Apple, and other mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung and Huawei also competed to use it, which led PCB manufacturers to invest in the production of Class SLP. In addition, with Samsung and Huawei launching folding mobile phones one after another, the driver of mobile phone floppy board also turned to COF substrate, and now more and more manufacturers are competing to invest in it.
In the process of investigating Taiwan's PCB technology blueprint, we have also followed up the inventory of Taiwan's PCB industry technology gap, including four aspects: reliability, 5G materials, manufacturing and processing and equipment demand. TPCA said that from the current technology gap, most of the applications correspond to the current 5G application. The huge business opportunities brought by 5G will be started in the early stage, followed by 5G smart phones. In the long run, there will be huge business opportunities derived from various 5G applications, including automobiles, industrial control, agriculture and so on.
For circuit board manufacturer, the demand of antenna, power amplifier and cabinet communication backplane for base station is the main requirement at present, and the related soft board driven by 5G mobile phone will be more considerable after 2020. Besides material support, the manufacturing end of 5G high frequency/high speed board for PCB manufacturer also needs such as heat dissipation design and thin board. All kinds of technical gaps are waiting for manufacturers to continue to overcome and improve their process capabilities such as precision fine circuit and high impedance matching requirements.
TPCA pointed out that, in addition to reflecting the leadership of Taiwan's PCB industry in technology, manufacturers can also examine their own technological capabilities that are lacking in the blueprint indicators, and that technological gaps are more available for academic and research institutions to plan for future technology development. The important basis of the exhibition project has substantial benefits for promoting the technical cooperation between industry and university and upgrading Taiwan's overall circuit board technology capability.
