Dielectric materials used for printed circuit applications consist of two components: the resin systems and the fiber reinforcement. The most successful and widely used resin systems are epoxy resin systems. However, the epoxy resin systems are petroleum-based which gives it some drawbacks, such as cost and sustainability issues. E-glass fibers have high dielectric constants which are not desirable for printed circuit boards. To solve these issues, a new soy oil resin was developed to replace the epoxy. Unsaturated soy oil was functionalized with different reactive groups to make it polymerizable. Then the functionalized oil was blended with comonomer and multifunctional agents to increase the crosslink density of the final thermoset. The resin system was designed to minimize the dielectric constants of the thermoset in order to increase the operation speed of the printed circuits. Natural fibers such as keratin fibers from chicken feathers were treated and used as reinforcement. Carbonization process of fibers was optimized to give better mechanical and dielectric properties.

This project was supported by the National Research Initiative of the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, grant number 2005-35504-16137.