Printed circuit board

n. thin board to which electric components and wires are attached to one side and printed circuits are attached to the other, PCB

In electronics, printed circuit boards, or PCBs, are used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, or traces, etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. Alternative names are printed wiring board (PWB),and etched wiring board. Populating the board with electronic components forms a printed circuit assembly (PCA), also known as a printed circuit board assembly (PCBA).
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<hardware> (PCB) A thin board to which electronic components are fixed by solder. Component leads and integrated circuit pins may pass through holes ("vias") in the board or they may be surface mounted, in which case no holes are required (though they may still be used to connect different layers).
The simplest kind of PCB has components and wires on one side and interconnections (the printed circuit) on the other. PCBs may have components mounted on both sides and may have many internal layers, allowing more connections to fit in the same board area. Boards with internal conductor layers usually have "plated-through holes" to improve the electrical connection to the internal layers.
The connections are metal strips (usually copper). The pattern of connections is often produced using photo-resist and acid etching. Boards, especially those for high frequency circuits such as modern microprocessors, usually have one or more "ground planes" and "power planes" which are large areas of copper for greater current carrying ability.
A computer or other electronic system might be built from several PCBs, e.g. processor, memory, graphics controller, disk controller etc. These boards might all plug into a motherboard or backplane or be connected by a ribbon cable.
(1995-05-01)