In Q3, the PCB market’s peak season, the industry’s most topical discussions are substrate-like PCB (SLP) and Liquid Crystal Polymer-Flexible Printed Circuit (LCP-FPC) products. With 3C electronic products facing demands for “thin, lightweight, short, and compact” designs and 5G high frequency transmission, the demand and market size of both of these advanced soft and hard board processes are expected to accelerate profoundly.

    With regard to current mobile phone design and development trends, higher-speed computing such as AI and 3D sensing, and dual-lens, triple-lens, and other photographic functions require more internal space in mobile phones, while more components and larger capacity batteries need to be accommodated to improve electricity and endurance. The adoption of the SLP design in Apple iPhone 8, iPhone 8+, and iPhone X motherboards is said to be the first use of SLP in the PCB industry.

     The PCB industry has noticed that tablets, notebook computers, etc. have also begun to pay attention to the feasibility of using SLP as tablets and PCs also emphasize battery life and endurance. Since the performance of the current lithium battery has reached its physical limit, the use of SLP design is a feasible way to increase internal space and enhance battery capacity, while also providing another stage for SLP.

In addition to SLP, this year’s most popular topic is LCP-FPC products. In fact, FCP antennas are not new technology as Apple iPhone products have used such technology in the past. However, as wireless communication products evolved from 3G to 4G, and as the upcoming 5G communication requires even more stringent product specifications, only FPC antennas have the capacity to meet the needs of higher frequency and high-speed transmission.