Flexible flat cable, or FFC, refers to any variety of electrical cable that is both flat and flexible. A flexible flat cable is a type of flexible electronics

Flexible electronics

Flexible electronics, also known as flex circuits, is a technology for assembling electronic circuits by mounting electronic devices on flexible plastic substrates, such as polyimide, PEEK or transparent conductive polyester film. Additionally, flex circuits can be screen printed silver circuits on...

. However, the term FFC usually refers to the extremely thin flat cable often found in high density electronic applications like laptops and cell phones. Where used to connect to flat panel display

Flat panel display

Flat panel displays encompass a growing number of electronic visual display technologies. They are far lighter and thinner than traditional television sets and video displays that use cathode ray tubes , and are usually less than thick...

s, FFCs may also be referred to as flat panel cables (FPC).
Sometimes the term FPC (flexible printed circuit

Flexible electronics

Flexible electronics, also known as flex circuits, is a technology for assembling electronic circuits by mounting electronic devices on flexible plastic substrates, such as polyimide, PEEK or transparent conductive polyester film. Additionally, flex circuits can be screen printed silver circuits on...

) is even --somewhat inaccurately-- used for any type of FFC.
FFC is a miniaturized form of ribbon cable

Ribbon cable

A ribbon cable is a cable with many conducting wires running parallel to each other on the same flat plane. As a result the cable is wide and flat. Its name comes from the resemblance of the cable to a piece of ribbon.Ribbon cables are usually seen for internal peripherals in computers, such as...

, which is also flat and flexible. The cable usually consists of a flat and flexible plastic film base, with multiple metallic conductors bonded to one surface. Often, each end the cable is reinforced with a stiffener to make insertion easier or to provide strain relief. The stiffener makes the cable slightly thicker.

Specifications

Pitch - refers to the spacing of the conductors. A single FFC can have different pitches between different conductors on the same cable, however this is uncommon.
Common pitches are 0.5 mm, 1 mm, 1.25mm, 2 mm.

Pitch Calculation - To calculate the pitch of an FFC, one needs to know how many conductors are present in the cable and the width of the cable. The cable width is divided by the number of conductors to obtain the cable's pitch. The pitch of an FFC may be required for replacement.

Exposure Length - the length of the electrical contact that has been exposed at the termination of the cable.

Stiffener - Most FFCs have some sort of extra material attached to the exposed length of the cable to facilitate ZIF or LIF

Low insertion force

thumb|300px|right|LIF-connector of a 1.8" [[hard disk drive]]Low-insertion-force sockets are integrated circuit sockets that are designed so the force required to insert or remove a package is low....

connections.