Known as the “King of plastics,” the polytetrafluoroethylene Roy J. Plunkett was developed in 1936 at the American Dupont. It has the following basic features:
With the development of 5G communication technology, the demand of high frequency and low dielectric materials is also increasing. PTFE has excellent insulation and is not easily disturbed by high frequency Fluoropolymer. It has good low dielectric properties and low loss factor under high frequency conditions, it can provide ultra-high frequency and high speed performance for data center, signal tower and personal electronic equipment. Therefore, with the acceleration of 5G, the market demand for high-performance PTFE is also growing.
As a low dielectric loss material
High frequency transmission technology is one of the key technologies of 5G wireless communication. It can increase the availability of frequency resources and enhance the demand of 5G wireless communication technology for network development. In order to realize high frequency transmission, it is necessary to use low dielectric constant and low dielectric loss functional materials. The dielectric constant of 5G to low dielectric materials is between 2.8 ~ 3.2. The Low-k dielectric is mainly used in antenna material, circuit board material, cover plate material and case material of 5G mobile phone. The Low-k dielectric include PTFE, PPO, LCP and Pi (or MPI) . As one of the lowest dielectric constant materials in organic materials, PTFE is widely used in 5G communication.
As the core material of printed circuit board
Printed circuit board (PCB) is the carrier of electronic components, which is the support of electronic components. Its main role is to provide circuit connections for electronic components on PCB. Copper clad laminate (CCL) is the main raw material of printed circuit board (PCB) . Copper clad laminate is a kind of lamellar material made by hot pressing of petroleum wood pulp paper or glass fiber cloth impregnated with resin and covered with copper foil by adhesive on one side or both sides. At present, epoxy glass cloth based copper clad laminate is widely used in 4G communication PCB, and the energy loss of dielectric materials (DF) is above 0.01, while 5G mainly belongs to the application fields of Micron and millimeter wave, the energy loss (DF) of low permittivity resin is usually required to be less than 0.005. As one of the lowest permittivity polymer materials, PTFE shows excellent dielectric properties in copper clad laminate, the energy loss (DF) of dielectric material is less than 0.002 under high frequency and high speed conditions, which meets the requirements of 5G communication base station.
A material used as a radio frequency transmitter
The coaxial cable in the field of communication refers to the cable with two concentric conductors, and the conductor and the shield layer share the same axis. The common coaxial cable consists of insulated copper conductor, the inner layer is insulated, the outer layer is ring conductor and its insulator, the whole cable is covered by PVC or PTFE sheath. PTFE has outstanding electrical insulation performance, wide temperature resistance range and frequency range, low dielectric constant and low loss factor, low hygroscopicity, electrical stability, chemical inertia excellent performance is very suitable for the need of low attenuation of data transmission cable, 5G communication cable is the necessary material. The semi-flexible coaxial cable with PTFE as insulator shows excellent attenuation shielding performance due to its ultra-low dielectric loss. During the construction of 5G base station, semi-flexible coaxial cable has replaced ribbed coaxial cable completely.
As 5G base station antenna filter material
Filter is a kind of frequency selection device, is an indispensable part of communication equipment, its principle through different frequencies of electromagnetic wave in the cavity oscillation, retention reaches the filter resonance frequency of electromagnetic wave, while other frequencies of electromagnetic waves in the oscillations dissipated from the realization of the filtering function. At present, the main filters used by major communication equipment manufacturers are metal cavity filters, which are mature in technology and low in production cost, it is mainly used in the remote radio frequency unit (RRU) and active antenna unit (AAU) of base station. Many PTFE components are used in the metal filter to support, insulate and insulate the heat. Enter the 5G era metal cavity filter further optimization, more miniaturization, more internal structure, PTFE consumption is larger than the 4G era.
As a key component in 5G smartphones
Both 5G mobile phone and 5G base station are important terminals in 5G network, which need to transmit and receive signals for data transmission. Therefore, 5G mobile phone also has RF and antenna modules like base station, it's just that the modules in 5G phones are more sophisticated and miniaturized. The main board of 5G mobile phone adopts the printed circuit board (PCB) of high frequency copper clad laminate based on PTFE to reduce the loss of signal. The RF signal between the RF module and the antenna module of the 5G mobile phone is transmitted through the PTFE coaxial cable, ensuring that the high-frequency, high-speed signal of the mobile phone is low loss.