In Case You Missed It
Additive Manufacturing
“Additively Printed Circuit Performance of Thermoformed In-Mold Electronics for Automotive Applications”
Authors: Pradeep Lall, Aditya Harsha, Shriram Kulkarni and Scott Miller
Abstract: The design and production of electronic components, especially in the automobile sector, could be completely transformed by in-mold electronics (IME), a revolutionary technology. IME provides benefits including better weight reduction, improved aesthetics and increased space efficiency by facilitating the smooth integration of electronic circuits into intricate three-dimensional surfaces. Nevertheless, despite their increasing use, thorough research on the electrical properties of IME circuits is still lacking, especially for those made with screen-printing methods on polycarbonate (PC) substrates that are then thermoformed. It is still unclear how important manufacturing factors, such as substrate deformation, ink conductivity, and mechanical stress, affect circuit performance. The purpose of this study is to look into how the electrical performance of IME circuits made for automotive applications is affected by screen-printing and thermoforming settings. This study offers important insights into the viability and dependability of IME technology in actual automotive settings by examining resistance fluctuations, capacitance stability, and overall circuit performance both before and after thermoforming. The results facilitate IME’s wider implementation in next-generation vehicle electronics by advancing understanding of its design and optimization. (Journal of Electronic Packaging, Nov. 29, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4070511)
Electronics Packaging
“Flip Chip on Glass-Core Substrates with Microbump and Cu-Cu Hybrid Bonding”
Authors: John H. Lau, Ning Liu, Mike Ma and Tzyy-Jang Tseng
Abstract: In this study, two problems of flip chip on glass-core package substrate are investigated. The first problem deals with the flip chip on glass-core package substrate with microbumps and the other deals with the flip chip on glass-core package substrate with Cu-Cu hybrid bonding. Emphasis is placed on the solder joint reliability due to the glass-core substrate by nonlinear time and temperature dependent simulations, especially for the determination of the warpage of the structure and accumulated inelastic strain of the solder joints. Some recommendations are provided. (Journal of Microelectronics and Electronic Packaging, vol. 22, no. 3, 2025, Sept. 15, 2025; https://imapsjmep.org/article/144212-flip-chip-on-glass-core-substrates-with-microbump-and-cu-cu-hybrid-bonding)
Environment
“Circular Innovation: How to Build Reverse Electronics Supply Chains – the Case of CIRC-UITS Project”
Authors: D. Perossa, L. Pomo and P. Rosa
Abstract: Waste electric and electronic equipment (WEEE) and end-of-life vehicles (ELVs) are waste streams typically holding high potential in terms of embedded economic value. It is indeed usually rich in terms of critical raw materials content. Furthermore, entire components are often technically reusable, repairable or can be remanufactured. There are, however, significant barriers to implementing electronics reverse supply chains, including several related to technical and economic constraints. In this context, in CIRC-UITS Horizon Europe Project, four pilots led by industrial partners are developed with the aim of defining electronics reverse supply chains in automotive and household equipment industries. Specific solutions are developed to overcome major barriers and enable the future implementation of such reverse supply chains at industrial scale. They attempt to overcome hurdles related to the low technology readiness level of automated solutions to perform component disassembly, struggles in designing products that are easy to be remanufactured and repaired, and mismatches between demand and supply of repaired and remanufactured electronic components. (PLM 2025, IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, Nov. 15, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-09700-2_42)
Schematic Design
“Graph Neural Networks for Automatic Addition of Optimizing Components in Printed Circuit Board Schematics”
Authors: P. Plettenberg, A. Alcalde, B. Sick and J.M. Thomas
Abstract: The design and optimization of printed circuit board schematics is crucial for the development of high-quality electronic devices. Thereby, an important task is to optimize drafts by adding components that improve the robustness and reliability of the circuit; e.g., pull-up resistors or decoupling capacitors. Since there is a shortage of skilled engineers and manual optimizations are very time-consuming, these best practices are often neglected. However, this typically leads to higher costs for troubleshooting in later development stages as well as shortened product life cycles, resulting in an increased amount of electronic waste that is difficult to recycle. Here, the authors present an approach for automating the addition of new components into PCB schematics by representing them as bipartite graphs and utilizing a node pair prediction model based on graph neural networks (GNNs). They apply their approach to three highly relevant PCB design optimization tasks and compare the performance of several popular GNN architectures on real-world datasets labeled by human experts. They show that GNNs can solve these problems with high accuracy and demonstrate that our approach offers the potential to automate PCB design optimizations in a time- and cost-efficient manner. (ECML PKDD 2025, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 16020, January 2026; https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-72243-5_29)