Printed Electronics

Definition

Printed Electronics serve as a cost effective alternative to standard printed circuit boards. Rather than using a plate-up/etch-down process to create circuits compose of copper, the printed electronics side of the industry use screened conductive inks to create interconnects. 

Often these inks do not have the current carrying capacity of solid copper traces on a 1:1 basis of feature size.  This can be overcome by applying a thicker coating.  However, this is often not necessary since the typical designs that incorporate printed electronic conductors are purely signal traces, thus not requiring a great deal of current carrying capacity.