Text/Polymer

There are currently three types of polymer materials for 5G communications in this official account, namely LFT-PP long fiber reinforced plastic composite, PEEK strong> In addition to LCP liquid crystal polymer materials in this article, welcome to pay attention to our official account, and we will continue to update some advanced materials.

Fifth generation (5G) mobile communication technology has six main characteristics: high speed, ubiquitous network, low power consumption, low latency, Internet of Everything, and reconstruction security. In field of 5G applications, liquid crystal polymer LCP materials have characteristics of low dielectric constant and low loss factor, which is in line with performance required by 5G. Thus, LCP materials will also have a wide range of applications in 5G field.

1. LCP Materials

Liquid crystal polymer is usually composed of rigid polymers, in English: liquid crystal polymer, called LCP. In molten state, its molecules are inflexible and consist of rigid rod-shaped macromolecular chains; after melting, it has both liquid fluidity and crystalline physical properties.

Figure 1-1 Molecular structure

Liquid crystal polymers (LCP) are mainly divided into lyotropic liquid crystal polymers and thermotropic liquid crystal polymers. Thermotropic liquid crystal polymers are commonly used as materials for extrusion. Liquid crystal polymers have been used in recent years as high-performance engineering plastics, and main representatives of lyotropic liquid crystal polymers are aromatic polyamides. LCP material for 5G communication refers to LCP lyotropic liquid crystal polymer.

Table 2-1 Basic Electrical Properties of LCP Materials

2. Benefits of LCP materials

2.1 Excellent mechanical properties

The rod-shaped rigid molecular chains of liquid crystal polymers have self-reinforcing properties due to their highly oriented alignment along flow direction during melting process, so they can outperform glass fiber reinforced engineering plastics, conventional glass fibers reinforced, without mechanical strength and elastic modulus levels .

2.2 Excellent fire resistance

LCD polymer is a flame retardant material that does not burn in air and emits very little smoke. The flame resistance of liquid crystal polymer can reach level of UL94-V-0.

2.3 Excellent melt flow and excellent forming characteristics

The melt viscosity of liquid crystal polymer is highly dependent on shear rate, and melt viscosity is very low in molding shear rate range, and fluidity is good.

In addition, LCP has outstanding thermal stability, extremely low coefficient of linear expansion, high dimensional accuracy and excellent chemical corrosion resistance.

3. Some manufacturers of LCP materials

LCP materials are popular in 5G era due to their unique properties. At present, production capacity of LCP materials is concentrated in Japan, United States and China, and there are LCP material manufacturers.

Table 3-1 Some manufacturers of LCP materials

Fourth, application and application of LCP materials

4.1 for flexible printed circuit boards

Flexible PCBs are mainly flexible FCCL copper foil substrates. LCP (Dielectric Film and Adhesive Film) film on market is used to make copper coated flexible laminates. The LCP film and copper foil are laminated to form a copper coated laminate. , Can be single-layer or multi-layer copper-plated laminates. The method of converting LCP into film is mainly through film extrusion and blowing, and then into flexible copper-clad laminate with processing equipment.

4.2 for base station antenna elements

The antenna element is main component of antenna. In 5G antenna element design, LCP material will be very useful. The main reason is that dielectric loss of LCP is extremely low at actual frequency. It will be lower, much lower than currently used metal vibrator.

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