Embedding Technologies for the Manufacturing of Advanced Miniaturised Modules toward the Realisation of Compact and Environmentally Friendly Electronic Devices

The proposed work is performed in the frame of the EU project “sustainablySMART”, which has undertaken research activities on “Eco-innovative approaches for advanced printed circuit boards” with the aim to demonstrate that embedding technologies are environmentally and economically beneficial since they save much surface space on main boards by embedding components in PCB layers. The main outcome is the manufacturing of robust and compact modules as sub-systems with specific functionalities. Based on this approach, the main board architecture of a voice recorder has been modified in order to be split in power, USB and DSP modules. This paper will describe the PCB embedding processes for the production of the digital signal processing (DSP) module, the power and the USB modules. In specific, for the DSP module, a 6-core layer with through vias and microvias is manufactured and then on its bottom side all the components are assembled which are going to be embedded. These components are the DSP BGA chip, voltage detector, bus buffer, etc. The components after embedding are routed to surface pads of the module. The rest of the components are assembled as SMT components on the surface of the DSP embedded module and these are the Flash memory as BGA package and 2-pad clock crystals. The DSP module (L5cm×1.5cm×2.8mm) together with the other two embedded modules will be assembled on the main board of the voice recorder. This paper will elaborate on the new design architecture of the device backbone and the assembly of all embedded modules on the backbone.