What’s the difference between Adhesiveless and Adhesive Polyimide (PI)?

Today I’d like to share what’s the difference between Adhesive PI and Adhesiveless PI.

Item 1: Adhesiveless PI stack up

As you can see in above stack up, there is no adhesive connect the Copper layer and Polyimide.

There are four advantages of adhesiveless PI:

1. Thinner Thickness

As you know, the thickness of adhesive is around 12.5um, 15um, 20um. If you have strict requirement for the whole board thickness, it will be a good choice to use adhesiveless PI.

2.Better Bending

Adhesiveless substrate is thinner than adhesive substrate, so it’s bending is better.

3.  Heat resistance

Due to the adhesive have poor performance in heat resistance, so without the adhesive, the adhesiveless base material have better heat resistance.

Under the same temperature, such as 200℃，the tearing strength of adhesiveless PI change a little. But the tearing strength of adhesive PI material rapidly decrease.

4.  Dimensional stability

The dimension of adhesiveless board change very small when the temperature increase. Even under the temperature of 300℃, it’s dimensional changing rate is no more than 0.1%.

Good dimensional stability will be great help for fine wiring process.

5.  Chemical Resistance

The adhesiveless substrate have good performance of chemical Resistance, it’s tearing strength have no obvious change with time increased.

The adhesive base material has poor chemical resistance, so it’s tear strength decreases greatly with the increase of time.

The only disadvantage for adhesiveless PI is it’s a little expensive than adhesive PI.

Item 2: Adhesive PI stack up

As you can see, the thickness of  2 layer adhesiveless FPC is 0.19+/-0.03mm.

The thickness of  2 layer adhesive FPC is 0.23+/-0.03mm.

If you need thicker thickness, the adhesive PI might can meet your requirement, the cost will be much lower than increase copper thickness or PI thickness.

There are two mainly advantages for adhesive PI:

1. Thicker thickness.
2. Cheaper price.

Anyway, if your project need thinner thickness or smaller line width and space (0.05mm), adhesiveless PI will be the best choice. Welcome to contact us at sales@www.bestfpcs.com if you need to know more details.