Category Archives: Displays

Worldwide semiconductor fab equipment capital expenditure growth (new and used) for 2015 is expected to be 0.5 percent (total capex of US$35.8 billion), increasing another 2.6 percent (to a total of $36.7 billion) in 2016, according to the latest update of the quarterly SEMI World Fab Forecast report.

SEMI reports that in 2015, Korea outspent all other countries ($9.0 billion) on front-end semiconductor fab equipment, and is expected to drop to second place in 2016 as Taiwan takes over with the largest capex spending at $8.3 billion. In 2015, Americas ranked third in overall regional capex spending with about $5.6 billion and is forecast to increase only slightly to (5.1 percent) in 2016.

fab equipment spending 2016

In 2015, 80 to 90 percent of fab equipment spending went to 300mm fabs, while only 10 percent was for 200mm or smaller.  SEMI’’s recently published “Global 200mm Fab Outlook” provides more detail about past and future 200mm activities.

Examining fab equipment spending by product type, Memory accounts for the largest share in 2015 and 2016.  While 2015’s spending was dominated by DRAM, the SEMI World Fab Forecast reports that 2016 will be dominated by Flash, mainly 3D-related architectures.  Capacity for 3D-NAND will continue to surge. SEMI’’s report tracks 10 major 3D producing facilities, with a capacity expansion of 47 percent in 2015 and 86 percent in 2016.

The Foundry segment is next in terms of the largest share of fab equipment spending in 2015 and 2016.  In general, the foundry segment shows steadier, more predictable spending patterns than other device product segments. Coming in third place in fab equipment spending, MPU had lower spending in 2015.  Logic spending was very strong in 2015, with 90 percent growth, driven by SONY’s CMOS image sensors.

Throughout 2015, SEMI anticipates that there will be 1,167 facilities worldwide investing in semiconductor equipment in 2016, including 56 future facilities across industry segments from Analog, Power, Logic, MPU, Memory, and Foundry to MEMS and LEDs facilities. For further details, please reference to the latest edition of SEMI’s World Fab Forecast report.

A new method for building “drawbridges” between metal nanoparticles may allow electronics makers to build full-color displays using light-scattering nanoparticles that are similar to the gold materials that medieval artisans used to create red stained-glass.

“Wouldn’t it be interesting if we could create stained-glass windows that changed colors at the flip of a switch?” said Christy Landes, associate professor of chemistry at Rice and the lead researcher on a new study about the drawbridge method that appears this week in the open-access journal Science Advances.

The research by Landes and other experts at Rice University’s Smalley-Curl Institute could allow engineers to use standard electrical switching techniques to construct color displays from pairs of nanoparticles that scatter different colors of light.

For centuries, stained-glass makers have tapped the light-scattering properties of tiny gold nanoparticles to produce glass with rich red tones. Similar types of materials could increasingly find use in modern electronics as manufacturers work to make smaller, faster and more energy-efficient components that operate at optical frequencies.

Though metal nanoparticles scatter bright light, researchers have found it difficult to coax them to produce dramatically different colors, Landes said.

Rice’s new drawbridge method for color switching incorporates metal nanoparticles that absorb light energy and convert it into plasmons, waves of electrons that flow like a fluid across a particle’s surface. Each plasmon scatters and absorbs a characteristic frequency of light, and even minor changes in the wave-like sloshing of a plasmon shift that frequency. The greater the change in plasmonic frequency, the greater the difference between the colors observed.

“Engineers hoping to make a display from optically active nanoparticles need to be able to switch the color,” Landes said. “That type of switching has proven very difficult to achieve with nanoparticles. People have achieved moderate success using various plasmon-coupling schemes in particle assemblies. What we’ve shown though is variation of the coupling mechanism itself, which can be used to produce huge color changes both rapidly and reversibly.”

To demonstrate the method, Landes and study lead author Chad Byers, a graduate student in her lab, anchored pairs of gold nanoparticles to a glass surface covered with indium tin oxide (ITO), the same conductor that’s used in many smartphone screens. By sealing the particles in a chamber filled with a saltwater electrolyte and a silver electrode, Byers and Landes were able form a device with a complete circuit. They then showed they could apply a small voltage to the ITO to electroplate silver onto the surface of the gold particles. In that process, the particles were first coated with a thin layer of silver chloride. By later applying a negative voltage, the researchers caused a conductive silver “drawbridge” to form. Reversing the voltage caused the bridge to withdraw.

“The great thing about these chemical bridges is that we can create and eliminate them simply by applying or reversing a voltage,” Landes said. “This is the first method yet demonstrated to produce dramatic, reversible color changes for devices built from light-activated nanoparticles.”

Byers said his research into the plasmonic behavior of gold dimers began about two years ago.

“We were pursuing the idea that we could make significant changes in optical properties of individual particles simply by altering charge density,” he said. “Theory predicts that colors can be changed just by adding or removing electrons, and we wanted to see if we could do that reversibly, simply by turning a voltage on or off.”

The experiments worked. The color shift was observed and reversible, but the change in the color was minute.

“It wasn’t going to get anybody excited about any sort of switchable display applications,” Landes said.

But she and Byers also noticed that their results differed from the theoretical predictions.

Landes said that was because the predictions were based upon using an inert electrode made of a metal like palladium that isn’t subject to oxidation. But silver is not inert. It reacts easily with oxygen in air or water to form a coat of unsightly silver oxide. This oxidizing layer can also form from silver chloride, and Landes said that is what was occurring when the silver counter electrode was used in Byers’ first experiments.

“It was an imperfection that was throwing off our results, but rather than run away from it, we decided to use it to our advantage,” Landes said.

Rice plasmonics pioneer and study co-author Naomi Halas, director of the Smalley-Curl Institute, said the new research shows how plasmonic components could be used to produce electronically switchable color-displays.

“Gold nanoparticles are particularly attractive for display purposes,” said Halas, Rice’s Stanley C. Moore Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and professor of chemistry, bioengineering, physics and astronomy, and materials science and nanoengineering. “Depending upon their shape, they can produce a variety of specific colors. They are also extremely stable, and even though gold is expensive, very little is needed to produce an extremely bright color.”

In designing, testing and analyzing the follow-up experiments on dimers, Landes and Byers engaged with a brain trust of Rice plasmonics experts that included Halas, physicist and engineer Peter Nordlander, chemist Stephan Link, materials scientist Emilie Ringe and their students, as well as Paul Mulvaney of the University of Melbourne in Australia.

Together, the team confirmed the composition and spacing of the dimers and showed how metal drawbridges could be used to induce large color shifts based on voltage inputs.

Nordlander and Hui Zhang, the two theorists in the group, examined the device’s “plasmonic coupling,” the interacting dance that plasmons engage in when they are in close contact. For instance, plasmonic dimers are known to act as light-activated capacitors, and prior research has shown that connecting dimers with nanowire bridges brings about a new state of resonance known as a “charge-transfer plasmon,” which has its own distinct optical signature.

“The electrochemical bridging of the interparticle gap enables a fully reversible transition between two plasmonic coupling regimes, one capacitive and the other conductive,” Nordlander said. “The shift between these regimes is evident from the dynamic evolution of the charge transfer plasmon.”

Halas said the method provides plasmonic researchers with a valuable tool for precisely controlling the gaps between dimers and other multiparticle plasmonic configurations.

“In an applied sense, gap control is important for the development of active plasmonic devices like switches and modulators, but it is also an important tool for basic scientists who are conducting curiosity-driven research in the emerging field of quantum plasmonics.”

Scientists and engineers are engaged in a global race to make new materials that are as thin, light and strong as possible. These properties can be achieved by designing materials at the atomic level, but they are only useful if they can leave the carefully controlled conditions of a lab.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have now created the thinnest plates that can be picked up and manipulated by hand.

Even though they are less than 100 nanometers thick, the researchers’ plates are strong enough to be picked up by hand and retain their shape after being bent and squeezed. Credit: University of Pennsylvania

Despite being thousands of times thinner than a sheet of paper and hundreds of times thinner than household cling wrap or aluminum foil, their corrugated plates of aluminum oxide spring back to their original shape after being bent and twisted.

Like cling wrap, comparably thin materials immediately curl up on themselves and get stuck in deformed shapes if they are not stretched on a frame or backed by another material.

Being able to stay in shape without additional support would allow this material, and others designed on its principles, to be used in aviation and other structural applications where low weight is at a premium.

The study was led by Igor Bargatin, the Class of 1965 Term Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics in Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, along with lab member Keivan Davami, a postdoctoral scholar, and Prashant Purohit, an associate professor of mechanical engineering. Bargatin lab members John Cortes and Chen Lin, both graduate students; Lin Zhao, a former student in Engineering’s nanotechnology master’s program; and Eric Lu and Drew Lilley, undergraduate students in the Vagelos Integrated Program in Energy Research, also contributed to the research.

They published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.

“Materials on the nanoscale are often much stronger than you’d expect, but they can be hard to use on the macroscale” Bargatin said. “We’ve essentially created a freestanding plate that has nanoscale thickness but is big enough to be handled by hand. That hasn’t been done before.”

Graphene, which can be as thin as a single atom of carbon, has been the poster-child for ultra-thin materials since it’s discovery won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010. Graphene is prized for its electrical properties, but its mechanical strength is also very appealing, especially if it could stand on its own. However, graphene and other atomically thin films typically need to be stretched like a canvas in a frame, or even mounted on a backing, to prevent them from curling or clumping up on their own.

“The problem is that frames are heavy, making it impossible to use the intrinsically low weight of these ultra-thin films,” Bargatin said. “Our idea was to use corrugation instead of a frame. That means the structures we make are no longer completely planar, instead, they have a three-dimensional shape that looks like a honeycomb, but they are flat and contiguous and completely freestanding.”

“It’s like an egg carton, but on the nanoscale,” said Purohit.

The researchers’ plates are between 25 and 100 nanometers thick and are made of aluminum oxide, which is deposited one atomic layer at a time to achieve precise control of thickness and their distinctive honeycomb shape.

“Aluminum oxide is actually a ceramic, so something that is ordinarily pretty brittle,” Bargatin said. “You would expect it, from daily experience, to crack very easily. But the plates bend, twist, deform and recover their shape in such a way that you would think they are made out of plastic. The first time we saw it, I could hardly believe it.”

Once finished, the plates’ corrugation provides enhanced stiffness. When held from one end, similarly thin films would readily bend or sag, while the honeycomb plates remain rigid. This guards against the common flaw in un-patterned thin films, where they curl up on themselves.

This ease of deformation is tied to another behavior that makes ultra-thin films hard to use outside controlled conditions: they have the tendency to conform to the shape of any surface and stick to it due to Van der Waals forces. Once stuck, they are hard to remove without damaging them.

Totally flat films are also particularly susceptible to tears or cracks, which can quickly propagate across the entire material.

“If a crack appears in our plates, however, it doesn’t go all the way through the structure,” Davami said. “It usually stops when it gets to one of the vertical walls of the corrugation.”

The corrugated pattern of the plates is an example of a relatively new field of research: mechanical metamaterials. Like their electromagnetic counterparts, mechanical metamaterials achieve otherwise impossible properties from the careful arrangement of nanoscale features. In mechanical metamaterials’ case, these properties are things like stiffness and strength, rather than their ability to manipulate electromagnetic waves.

Other existing examples of mechanical metamaterials include “nanotrusses,” which are exceptionally lightweight and robust three-dimensional scaffolds made out of nanoscale tubes. The Penn researchers’ plates take the concept of mechanical metamaterials a step further, using corrugation to achieve similar robustness in a plate form and without the holes found in lattice structures.

That combination of traits could be used to make wings for insect-inspired flying robots, or in other applications where the combination of ultra-low thickness and mechanical robustness is critical.

“The wings of insects are a few microns thick, and can’t thinner because they’re made of cells,” Bargatin said. “The thinnest man-made wing material I know of is made by depositing a Mylar film on a frame, and it’s about half a micron thick. Our plates can be ten or more times thinner than that, and don’t need a frame at all. As a result, they weigh as little as than a tenth of a gram per square meter.”

Engineers at Oregon State University have made a fundamental breakthrough in understanding the physics of photonic “sintering,” which could lead to many new advances in solar cells, flexible electronics, various types of sensors and other high-tech products printed onto something as simple as a sheet of paper or plastic.

Sintering is the fusing of nanoparticles to form a solid, functional thin-film that can be used for many purposes, and the process could have considerable value for new technologies.

Photonic sintering has the possible advantage of higher speed and lower cost, compared to other technologies for nanoparticle sintering.

In the new research, OSU experts discovered that previous approaches to understand and control photonic sintering had been based on a flawed view of the basic physics involved, which had led to a gross overestimation of product quality and process efficiency.

Based on the new perspective of this process, which has been outlined in Nature Scientific Reports, researchers now believe they can create high quality products at much lower temperatures, at least twice as fast and with 10 times more energy efficiency.

Removing constraints on production temperatures, speed and cost, the researchers say, should allow the creation of many new high-tech products printed onto substrates as cheap as paper or plastic wrap.

“Photonic sintering is one way to deposit nanoparticles in a controlled way and then join them together, and it’s been of significant interest,” said Rajiv Malhotra, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering in the OSU College of Engineering. “Until now, however, we didn’t really understand the underlying physics of what was going on. It was thought, for instance, that temperature change and the degree of fusion weren’t related – but in fact that matters a lot.”

With the concepts outlined in the new study, the door is open to precise control of temperature with smaller nanoparticle sizes. This allows increased speed of the process and high quality production at temperatures at least two times lower than before. An inherent “self-damping” effect was identified that has a major impact on obtaining the desired quality of the finished film.

“Lower temperature is a real key,” Malhotra said. “To lower costs, we want to print these nanotech products on things like paper and plastic, which would burn or melt at higher temperatures. We now know that is possible, and how to do it. We should be able to create production processes that are both fast and cheap, without a loss of quality.”

Products that could evolve from the research, Malhotra said, include solar cells, gas sensors, radiofrequency identification tags, and a wide range of flexible electronics. Wearable biomedical sensors could emerge, along with new sensing devices for environmental applications.

In this technology, light from a xenon lamp can be broadcast over comparatively large areas to fuse nanoparticles into functional thin films, much faster than with conventional thermal methods. It should be possible to scale up the process to large manufacturing levels for industrial use.

This advance was made possible by a four-year, $1.5 million National Science Foundation Scalable Nanomanufacturing Grant, which focuses on transcending the scientific barriers to industry-level production of nanomaterials. Collaborators at OSU include Chih-hung Chang, Alan Wang and Greg Herman.

OSU researchers will work with two manufacturers in private industry to create a proof-of-concept facility in the laboratory, as the next step in bringing this technology toward commercial production.

SEMI Foundation, created by global industry association SEMI to support education and career awareness in the field of high-tech, has announced the appointment of Leslie Tugman as its executive director. SEMI Foundation is known for its flagship program, SEMI High Tech U, which serves high school students interested in pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering and math. Plans are underway to expand SEMI Foundation’s activities under Tugman’s leadership to include workforce development programs.

“Leslie has been a key member of the SEMI Foundation team for the past 15 years, helping delivering over 190 High Tech U programs that have reached more than 6,000 students and teachers since the foundation’s inception in 2002,” said Art Zafiropoulo, chairman and CEO of Ultratech, and founding member of the SEMI Foundation board of directors. “Leslie’s thorough understanding of the High Tech U program and her passion and experience for workforce development will ensure continuity and quality of programs as we look to expand the foundation’s activities as part of our 2020 strategic initiatives.”

SEMI has long been at the center of the electronics supply chain representing its more than 1,900 corporate members.  As the electronics supply chain has become increasingly interdependent, SEMI’s platforms have been ever more relied on to bring the extended electronics supply chain together for collaboration.  Additionally, SEMI recently named FlexTech as a Strategic Association Partner providing this vital Flexible Hybrid Electronics community access to SEMI’s global platforms and adjacent opportunities for SEMI members. Now that the SEMI Foundation is a mature entity with established leadership, it is well-positioned to expand in complementary new directions.

“I am excited about this appointment, and look forward to the opportunity to work with the board and take the SEMI Foundation to the next level,” said Tugman. “The foundation is more than High Tech U; we are embarking on workforce development initiatives that address the pipeline for members in a near-term way.”

While with SEMI High Tech U, Tugman was president of WorkForce Resources, Inc.  Prior to that, she served as the business development director for Business Education Compact in Portland, Oregon, delivering workforce development programs focused on educator internships. Career milestones include deputy executive directorship of the Texas Water Development Board, and assistant land commissioner with the Texas General Land Office.

SEMI High Tech U provides secondary school students with an intensive, industry-led introduction to the high tech industry, potential career paths and education requirements to meet their goals.

SEMI High Tech U provides secondary school students with an intensive, industry-led introduction to the high tech industry, potential career paths and education requirements to meet their goals.

Students and teachers participate in hands-on activities that focus on topics including statistics, nanotechnology, solar and alternative energy technologies, electronics and mathematics. Students also work on soft skills and participate in mock job interviews with industry professionals.

Students and teachers participate in hands-on activities that focus on topics including statistics, nanotechnology, solar and alternative energy technologies, electronics and mathematics. Students also work on soft skills and participate in mock job interviews with industry professionals.

Demand for LTPS TFT LCD shipments rose 30 percent in September 2015 to reach 51.6 million units, due to strong demand from Apple and Chinese brands. Total smartphone panel shipments grew 4 percent month over month to reach 160 million units in September 2015. While amorphous silicon (a-Si) thin-film transistor (TFT) liquid-crystal display (LCD) panels continue to lead the smartphone display market, low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS) TFT LCD panel shipment share is growing, according to IHS Inc., a of critical information and insight.

“TFT-LCD, based on a-Si substrate, has been the leading panel technology for mobile phones because it is easy to manufacture and costs less to produce than other display technologies. However, since Apple adopted LTPS for its popular iPhones, demand for the new technology has continued to increase,” said Brian Huh, senior analyst for IHS Technology. “While LTPS panels cost greater, they boast lower power consumption and higher resolution compared to a-Si LCD panels. Greater demand for higher definition screens, especially in China, has also increased the adoption of LTPS LCD mobile phone displays.”

Based on the latest information in the IHS Smartphone Display Shipment Tracker, the market share for the a-Si TFT LCD panel fell 10 percent month over month, but the panel still comprised the majority of smartphone display shipments, reaching 79.6 million in September 2015. Active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) panel shipments grew 7 percent to reach just 25 million units.

As a point of differentiation in the smartphone display market, Samsung Electronics adopted AMOLED-based LTPS displays in 2009. At that time Samsung Display was not looking to expand its customer base because Samsung Electronics digested almost all of the company’s AMOLED capacity. However as Samsung Electronics’ AMOLED smartphone business began to decline last year, Samsung Display has been expanding its customer lineup. “Since the end of last year, Samsung Display has been actively and aggressively promoting AMOLED displays to other electronics companies, especially in China, and AMOLED panel shipments for Chinese brands have increased remarkably since September,” Huh said.

Year-over-year large-area display shipments are forecast to fall 5 percent, reaching 682 million units in 2015. This decline in unit shipments will be offset by an increase in large area thin-film transistor (TFT) liquid crystal display (LCD) shipment area, which is expected to grow 5 percent this year, according to IHS Inc., the global source of critical information and insight.

In addition to global currency issues that resulted in higher import prices for displays in most regions, slowing demand for information technology (IT) panels is driving down total unit shipments of large area TFT LCD displays. Combined year-over-year unit shipments for tablets, notebook PC and PC monitors will decline 12 percent. At the same time, TFT LCD TV panel unit shipments will increase by just 7 percent this year.

Similar to the unit-shipment trend, combined shipment area for displays used in PCs, notebooks and tablets is expected to decline 10 percent in 2015; however, year-over-year area shipments of TV panels is forecast to grow 9 percent this year. Increasing TV panel area shipment is leading to growth in the overall TFT LCD panel market, because TV displays comprise the vast majority (78 percent) of total panel area, according to the latest IHS Large Area Display Market Tracker. 

“Maintaining television panel production is the most important factor in maintaining the display industry’s fab utilization,” said Yoonsung Chung, director of large area display research for IHS Technology. “Chinese panel manufacturers have focused on increasing Gen 8 fabs for some time now. To consume this added capacity, TV panel makers must produce more panels, which means the industry could end up adding excess panels to inventory, leading to sharp TV panel price erosion in the second half of this year.”

Although the average selling price (ASP) for TV panels has already dropped dramatically, as inventory issues remain, prices will likely continue to decline in the coming year. “Panel price erosion will lower the cost of 55-inch-and-larger TVs, which could end up stimulating consumer demand for larger televisions,” Chung said.

By Sue Davis, Director of Business Development & Senior Analyst, Techcet

IDTechEx Printed Electronics USA 2015, held in Santa Clara, CA Nov 18-19, is one mega conference with 8 co-located tracks ranging from sensor technology & wearables to IoT, energy harvesting & storage to electric vehicles, 3D printing and graphene. IDTechEx completely occupied the Santa Clara Convention Center; throughout the day attendees and exhibitors commented attendance was up over prior years. To the dismay of some late arrivals, parking spaces were at a premium.

A venue with >200 exhibitors showcasing new technologies and applications connected conference attendees with equipment and materials suppliers, OEMs, end users, research institutes and academia.

Raghu Das, CEO of IDTechEx, kicked off the conference by sharing a key trends including:

  • Structural electronics are here now!
  • The Fashion industry is converging with technology (and evidenced by a number of exhibitors from this sector)
  • Stretchable electronics R&D has ramped significantly in the last 12 months
  • Printed and flexible electronics manufacturing is becoming center stage

Dr. Mounir Zok, a keynote speaker and biomedical engineering specialist for the US Olympic committee started his talk with a quote “The blink of an eye dictates gold vs no medal.” He emphasized that technology is a key enabler to continually improve sports performance.

Highlights from exhibitors and speakers follow.

Keith McMillen, founder and CEO of BeBop Sensors and avid musician, shared his journey of developing smart fabric cylindrical sensors to analyze a violinist’s bow movement led to utilizing this technology for the Internet of Things and the founding of BeBop Sensors.

BeBop Sensor Examples

BeBop Sensor Examples

Dream car in every facet; aesthetics, functionality and environmental impact understates the design of the Blade Car. Keith Czinger, CEO and Founder of Divergent discussed the foundation for Blade’s development was deeply rooted in reducing environmental impact while ensuring high performance. Divergent reports that manual chassis assembly can be completed within 30 minutes utilizing its’ node network. Nodes are manufactured of a metal alloy and produced using 3D printers. The light and strong chassis is comprised of these nodes and with carbon fiber tubes.

Divergent Blade utilizing 3D printing for node-tube chassis

Divergent Blade utilizing 3D printing for node-tube chassis

Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) manufactured via additive 3D printing technology, vs. conventional processing labor, material and time intensive processes was demonstrated at NanoDimension’s booth. Simon Fried, CMO and Co-Founder of NanoDimension discussed the benefit of 3D printed circuit boards (prototyping in hours vs weeks, design flexibility, process repeatability, …). In addition to development the DragonFly 3D printer, NanoDimension has developed a line of specialty conductive inks.

NanoDimension DragonFly 200 3D Printer

NanoDimension DragonFly 200 3D Printer

Sensoria Fitness has developed a line of wear fitness clothing and integrated running system that communicates with iOS and Android apps. A key use case is the gait analysis capability to assist with performance running and to assist clinicians with treatment plans for dysfunctional gait patterns.

Sensoria Fitness Socks (Innovation Awards at CES 2015 & IDTechEx 2015 USA)

Sensoria Fitness Socks (Innovation Awards at CES 2015 & IDTechEx 2015 USA)

View Technologies, a joint venture between Stanley Black & Decker, Inc. and RF Controls, has developed the inView Platform that enables 3rd party applications to run more efficiently and accurately. This platform is comprised of Echo antenna(s) and three tiers of service that allow you Locate, Track and Act depending on business needs. Location service provide as real-time stream of 3D position data for Passive UHF RFID tags.

View Technologies - Manufacturing Application

View Technologies – Manufacturing Application

Valencell develops high-performance biometric sensor technology and licenses its technology to a variety of consumer electronics manufacturers, mobile device and accessory makers, sports and fitness brands, gaming companies, and first-responder/military suppliers for integration into their products.

Products utilizing Valencell’s Biometric Sensor Technolgy

Products utilizing Valencell’s Biometric Sensor Technolgy

Another show highlight was Demonstration Street, a dedicated area on the show floor for product demonstrations in various stages of development – prototype to commercialization- featured printed flexible displays including posters, e-readers, audio paper, interactive games, OLED displays, electronics in fabrics, interactive printed controls and menus, printed RFID and more.

IDTechEx 2015 USA offered a myriad of opportunities to interact with technologists and exhibitors attend hundreds of insightful presentations. Master classes covering an array of topics and company tours bookended the two-day conference and exhibition. The main challenge was to create a “show plan” in hopes that one would be able to attend desired presentations and exhibits.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced it has been presented with an Award of Excellence from INOVA Semiconductors GmbH, a specialist in the development of products for Gigabit/s serial data communication for in-vehicle Display- and Driver Assistance Systems.

This award acknowledges GLOBALFOUNDRIES for its ability to achieve top quality and yield performance for the silicon wafers produced specifically for the customer’s RF communication products used in the automotive market. Driven by “Zero Excursion, Zero Defect” (ZEZD) mindset, this is a testament to GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ continuous strive for improvement to increase initial product quality and reduce wafer failure rate after delivery.

“Achieving zero defect is our goal and GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ proven expertise in the automotive semiconductor supply chain plays an important role in helping us to reach that goal,” said Robert Kraus, INOVA Semiconductors CEO.

“It is a great honor for GLOBALFOUNDRIES to receive this award from INOVA. This award further solidifies our position in serving the automotive market over a decade with high quality and reliability standard, and propel us to become a leading foundry in this segment,” said KC Ang, SVP and General Manager for GLOBALFOUNDRIES Singapore.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES completes a range of industry certifications and audits every year in its continuous commitment to semiconductor quality and reliability. Every fab in Singapore are certified or exceeding ISO-TS 16949, ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001, including the customer-led VDA6.3 audits that exceed the TS16949 standard. GLOBALFOUNDRIES is also a member of the Automotive Electronics Council (AEC) which sets global industry standards for automotive semiconductor quality.

By Sue Davis, Director of Business Development & Senior Analyst, Techcet

IDTechEx Printed Electronics USA 2015, held in Santa Clara, CA Nov 18-19, is one mega conference with 8 co-located tracks ranging from sensor technology & wearables to IoT, energy harvesting & storage to electric vehicles, 3D printing and graphene. IDTechEx completely occupied the Santa Clara Convention Center; throughout the day attendees and exhibitors commented the attendance was indeed up over prior years. To the dismay of some late arrivals, parking spaces were at a premium.

A venue with >200 exhibitors showcasing new technologies and applications connected conference attendees with equipment and materials suppliers, OEMs, end users, research institutes and academia.

Raghu Das, CEO of IDTechEx, kicked off the conference by sharing a key trends including:

  • Structural electronics are here now!
  • The Fashion industry is converging with technology (and evidenced by a number of exhibitors from this sector)
  • Stretchable electronics R&D has ramped significantly in the last 12 months
  • Printed and flexible electronics manufacturing is becoming center stage

Dr. Mounir Zok, a keynote speaker and biomedical engineering specialist for the US Olympic committee started his talk with a quote: “The blink of an eye dictates gold vs no medal.” He emphasized that technology is a key enabler to continually improve sports performance.

I had the opportunity to meet with several exhibitors:

  • Keith McMillen, founder and CEO of BeBop Sensors and avid musician, shared his journey of developing cylindrical sensors to analyze a violinist’s bow movement led to utilizing this technology for the Internet of Things and the founding of BeBop Sensors. Smart fabric is the core for Bebop’s sensor platform.
  • Dream car in every facet; aesthetics, functionality and environment understates the design of the Blade Keith Czinger, CEO and Founder of Divergent, discussed the foundation for Blade’s development was deeply rooted in reducing environmental impact while ensuring high performance.
  • Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) – manufactured via additive 3D printing technology vs. conventional processing labor, material and time intensive processes was demonstrated at NanoDimesion’s booth. Simon Fried, CMO and Co-Founder of NanoDimension discussed the benefit of 3D printed circuit boards (prototyping in hours vs weeks, design flexibility, process repeatability, …). In addition to development the 3D printers, NanoDimension has developed a line of specialty inks.

Another show highlight was Demonstration Street, a dedicated area on the show floor for product demonstrations in various stages of development – prototype to commercialization- featured printed flexible displays including posters, e-readers, audio paper, interactive games, OLED displays, electronics in fabrics, interactive printed controls and menus, printed RFID and more.

Stay tuned: Day 2 promises to be equally exciting! The main challenge is navigating IDTechEx to see all the great technology.