In the future, electronic products will be designed more freely, as electronic circuits will be printed on plastic components directly instead of conventional rigid circuit boards. Moulded interconnects devices (MID) are the mechanical moulded parts with a structure of the conductive pattern. MID offer a great potential as a substitute of printed circuit boards, especially regarding free 3D-shaping and functional integration. MID approach requires a combination of various technologies to fabricate a product from different materials, however, the product integrates different mechanical and electrical functionalities.

The main objective of project is to develop and demonstrate innovative, unconventional manufacturing technologies based on laser structuring and selective plating on conventional plastic materials to create new manufacturing chain of multi-material products for automotive and consumer durable markets.

The project is based on the Selective Surface Activation Induced by a Laser (SSAIL) technology developed in the FP7 APPOLO project. The activities in project are directed to upscale and validate the technology, consisting of laser structuring, chemical activation and plating with other technologies toward the whole production chain of the 3D MID devices and expanding it to multi-layer 3D MID architectures with the final goal to reduce costs and increase the functionality of the products. New recipes of chemicals for electroless plating on polymers will be developed ensuring reliable metallization of polymers without expensive and hazardous additives.

The whole production value chain from electronic design, chemicals, laser writing, metal plating, soldering, assembly, and testing are covered by the project. In-line inspection tool and technologies will be developed based on data mining and deep learning. Finally, demonstrators will be fabricated for selected cases for opto-electric devices in automotive and consumer durable areas.