Category Archives: MEMS

SiFive, a provider of commercial RISC-V processor IP, today announced the first open-source RISC-V-based SoC platform for edge inference applications based on NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Accelerator (NVDLA) technology.

The demo will be shown this week at the Hot Chips conference and consists of NVDLA running on an FPGA connected via ChipLink to SiFive’s HiFive Unleashed board powered by the Freedom U540, the world’s first Linux-capable RISC-V processor. The complete SiFive implementation is well suited for intelligence at the edge, where high-performance with improved power and area profiles are crucial. SiFive’s silicon design capabilities and innovative business model enables a simplified path to building custom silicon on the RISC-V architecture with NVDLA.

NVIDIA open-sourced its leading deep learning accelerator over a year ago to spark the creation of more AI silicon solutions. Open-source architectures such as NVDLA and RISC-V are essential building blocks of innovation for Big Data and AI solutions.

“It is great to see open-source collaborations, where leading technologies such as NVDLA can make the way for more custom silicon to enhance the applications that require inference engines and accelerators,” said Yunsup Lee, co-founder and CTO, SiFive. “This is exactly how companies can extend the reach of their platforms.”

“NVIDIA open sourced its NVDLA architecture to drive the adoption of AI,” said Deepu Talla, vice president and general manager of Autonomous Machines at NVIDIA. “Our collaboration with SiFive enables customized AI silicon solutions for emerging applications and markets where the combination of RISC-V and NVDLA will be very attractive.”

The Trump administration’s consideration of tariffs on Chinese printed circuit assemblies and connected devices would cost the economy $520.8 million and $2.4 billion annually for the 10 percent and 25 percent tariffs, respectively, according to a new study commissioned by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA).

“With the economy thriving under President Trump – we’ve seen remarkably low unemployment and a booming stock market – the administration shouldn’t jeopardize America’s global standing with tariffs,” said Gary Shapiro, CEO and president, CTA. “Foreign governments don’t pay the cost of tariffs, Americans do – and for that reason, U.S. trade policy needs to steer clear of tariffs that act like taxes on American manufacturers and consumers. The danger we face – the unintended consequence – is that tariffs mean Americans will pay more for all the devices they use every day to access the internet.”

The economic impact study shows American shoppers will have to pay between $1.6 billion and $3.2 billion more for connected devices such as gateways, modems, routers, smart speakers, smartwatches and other Bluetooth enabled products. The price of connected devices from China will increase by between 8.5 and 22 percent. And prices for these products from all sources will rise between 3.2 and 6.2 percent.

Similarly, the price of printed circuit assemblies from China –– will increase by between nine and 23 percent, while an alternative supply from U.S. manufacturers will cost two to three percent higher. As a result of higher input costs, totaling an additional $900 million to $1.8 billion, American manufacturers of products that contain printed circuit assemblies will purchase between six and 12 percent less from suppliers overall.

“When our government begins to charge its own companies and people with more taxes in the form of tariffs, we have put in jeopardy not just the American Dream of many small and mid-size businesses, but you put in jeopardy the people that work for them too,” said Win Cramer, CEO, JLab Audio, a California based company and CTA member. “These people support a growing economy, support a growing business and, most importantly, pay taxes. Pre-tariffs, JLab Audio was planning to scale up with new hires and programs to push our company’s growth to another level, but now we’ve put all of that on hold as we need to see how everything shakes out.”

Based on CTA’s most recent U.S. Consumer Technology Sales and Forecasts report, if the administration enacts tariffs of 10 and 25 percent, CTA projects 2019 U.S. unit shipments of connected devices such as fitness trackers, smartwatches, wireless headphones, modems/broadband gateways, wireless earbuds and smart speakers would decline by as much as 12 percent. Also, U.S. shipment revenues for these devices would decrease by as much as 6.5 percent in 2019.

A team of engineers at the University of Delaware is developing next-generation smart textiles by creating flexible carbon nanotube composite coatings on a wide range of fibers, including cotton, nylon and wool. Their discovery is reported in the journal ACS Sensors where they demonstrate the ability to measure an exceptionally wide range of pressure – from the light touch of a fingertip to being driven over by a forklift.

Fabric coated with this sensing technology could be used in future “smart garments” where the sensors are slipped into the soles of shoes or stitched into clothing for detecting human motion.

Carbon nanotubes give this light, flexible, breathable fabric coating impressive sensing capability. When the material is squeezed, large electrical changes in the fabric are easily measured.

“As a sensor, it’s very sensitive to forces ranging from touch to tons,” said Erik Thostenson, an associate professor in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering.

Nerve-like electrically conductive nanocomposite coatings are created on the fibers using electrophoretic deposition (EPD) of polyethyleneimine functionalized carbon nanotubes.

“The films act much like a dye that adds electrical sensing functionality,” said Thostenson. “The EPD process developed in my lab creates this very uniform nanocomposite coating that is strongly bonded to the surface of the fiber. The process is industrially scalable for future applications.”

Now, researchers can add these sensors to fabric in a way that is superior to current methods for making smart textiles. Existing techniques, such as plating fibers with metal or knitting fiber and metal strands together, can decrease the comfort and durability of fabrics, said Thostenson, who directs UD’s Multifunctional Composites Laboratory. The nanocomposite coating developed by Thostenson’s group is flexible and pleasant to the touch and has been tested on a range of natural and synthetic fibers, including Kevlar, wool, nylon, Spandex and polyester. The coatings are just 250 to 750 nanometers thick — about 0.25 to 0.75 percent as thick as a piece of paper — and would only add about a gram of weight to a typical shoe or garment. What’s more, the materials used to make the sensor coating are inexpensive and relatively eco-friendly, since they can be processed at room temperature with water as a solvent.

Exploring Future Applications

One potential application of the sensor-coated fabric is to measure forces on people’s feet as they walk. This data could help clinicians assess imbalances after injury or help to prevent injury in athletes. Specifically, Thostenson’s research group is collaborating with Jill Higginson, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Neuromuscular Biomechanics Lab at UD, and her group as part of a pilot project funded by Delaware INBRE. Their goal is to see how these sensors, when embedded in footwear, compare to biomechanical lab techniques such as instrumented treadmills and motion capture.

During lab testing, people know they are being watched, but outside the lab, behavior may be different.

“One of our ideas is that we could utilize these novel textiles outside of a laboratory setting — walking down the street, at home, wherever,” said Thostenson.

Sagar Doshi, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering at UD, is the lead author on the paper. He worked on making the sensors, optimizing their sensitivity, testing their mechanical properties and integrating them into sandals and shoes. He has worn the sensors in preliminary tests, and so far, the sensors collect data that compares with that collected by a force plate, a laboratory device that typically costs thousands of dollars.

“Because the low-cost sensor is thin and flexible the possibility exists to create custom footwear and other garments with integrated electronics to store data during their day-to-day lives,” Doshi said. “This data could be analyzed later by researchers or therapists to assess performance and ultimately bring down the cost of healthcare.”

This technology could also be promising for sports medicine applications, post-surgical recovery, and for assessing movement disorders in pediatric populations.

“It can be challenging to collect movement data in children over a period of time and in a realistic context,” said Robert Akins, Director of the Center for Pediatric Clinical Research and Development at the Nemours – Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington and affiliated professor of materials science and engineering, biomedical engineering and biological sciences at UD. “Thin, flexible, highly sensitive sensors like these could help physical therapists and doctors assess a child’s mobility remotely, meaning that clinicians could collect more data, and possibly better data, in a cost-effective way that requires fewer visits to the clinic than current methods do.”

Interdisciplinary collaboration is essential for the development of future applications, and at UD, engineers have a unique opportunity to work with faculty and students from the College of Health Sciences on UD’s Science, Technology and Advanced Research (STAR) Campus.

“As engineers, we develop new materials and sensors but we don’t always understand the key problems that doctors, physical therapists and patients are facing,” said Doshi. “We collaborate with them to work on the problems they are facing and either direct them to an existing solution or create an innovative solution to solve that problem.”

Thostenson’s research group also uses nanotube-based sensors for other applications, such as structural health monitoring.

“We’ve been working with carbon nanotubes and nanotube-based composite sensors for a long time,” said Thostenson, who is affiliated faculty at UD’s Center for Composite Materials (UD-CCM). Working with researchers in civil engineering his group has pioneered the development of flexible nanotube sensors to help detect cracks in bridges and other types of large-scale structures. “One of the things that has always intrigued me about composites is that we design them at varying lengths of scale, all the way from the macroscopic part geometries, an airplane or an airplane wing or part of a car, to the fabric structure or fiber level. Then, the nanoscale reinforcements like carbon nanotubes and graphene give us another level to tailor the material structural and functional properties. Although our research may be fundamental, there is always an eye towards applications. UD-CCM has a long history of translating fundamental research discoveries in the laboratory to commercial products through UD-CCM’s industrial consortium.”

SEMI today announced that all legal requirements have been met for the ESD (Electronic Systems Design) Alliance to become a SEMI Strategic Association Partner.

Full integration of the Redwood City, California-based association representing the semiconductor design ecosystem is expected to be complete by the end of 2018. The integration will extend ESD Alliance’s global reach in the electronics manufacturing supply chain and strengthen engagement and collaboration between the semiconductor design and manufacturing communities worldwide.

As a SEMI Strategic Association Partner, the ESD Alliance will retain its own governance and continue its mission to represent and support companies in the semiconductor design ecosystem.

The ESD Alliance will lead its strategic goals and objectives as part of SEMI, leveraging SEMI’s robust global resources including seven regional offices, expositions and conferences, technology communities and activities in areas such as advocacy, international standards, environment, health and safety (EH&S) and market statistics.

With the integration, SEMI adds the design segment to its electronics manufacturing supply chain scope, connecting the full ecosystem. The integration is a key step in streamlining SEMI members’ collaboration and connection with the electronic system design, IP and fabless communities. The Strategic Association Partnership will also enhance collaboration and innovation across the collective SEMI membership as ESD Alliance members bring key capabilities to SEMI’s vertical application platforms such as Smart Transportation, Smart Manufacturing and Smart Data as well as applications including AI and Machine Learning.

“The addition of ESD Alliance as a SEMI Strategic Association Partner is a milestone in our mission to drive new efficiencies across the full global electronics design and manufacturing supply chain for greater collaboration and innovation,” said Ajit Manocha, president and CEO of SEMI. “This partnership provides opportunities for all SEMI members for accelerated growth and new business opportunities in end-market applications. We welcome ESD Alliance members to the SEMI family.”

“Our members are excited about becoming part of SEMI’s broad community that spans the electronics manufacturing supply chain,” said Bob Smith, executive director of the ESD Alliance. “Global collaboration between design and manufacturing is a requirement for success with today’s complex electronic products. Our new role at SEMI will help develop and strengthen the connections between the design and manufacturing communities.”

All ESD Alliance member companies, including global leaders ARM, Cadence, Mentor, a Siemens business, and Synopsys, will join SEMI’s global membership of more than 2,000 companies while retaining ESD Alliance’s distinct self-governed community within SEMI.

TowerJazz, the global specialty foundry, announced details of its China Technical Global Symposium (TGS) event in Shanghai on August 22, 2018, focusing on the company’s analog technology offerings, advanced manufacturing solutions and commitment to customer partnerships.

In addition, TowerJazz has launched its official “WeChat” account, the most popular communication app in China, enabling the Company to support the growing activities in China while increasing interaction with Chinese users and sharing the latest TowerJazz technology information, news and events.

“China is a strong region for TowerJazz with on-going increased activities and we are answering the growing demand of Chinese players with our various advanced analog platforms, including Radio Frequency (RF) & High Performance Analog (HPA), power management, and CMOS image sensors (CIS), targeting fast growing markets such as automotive, sensors, the IoT, and 5G, among others,” said Qin Lei, TowerJazz China Country Manager. “In addition, we are pleased to launch our “WeChat” account to better reach and network with our existing and potential Chinese customers.”

Company executives and experts will provide technical sessions on TowerJazz’s leading specialty process technologies such as: RF SOI and SiGe for wireless handsets and the IoT, high performance SiGe for optical networking, 5G, mmWave and automotive applications, silicon photonics (SiPho) technology for optical networks, 65nm CMOS technology with embedded NVM solutions, 0.18um and 65nm BCD focusing on low voltage power products, and CMOS image sensors for face recognition and automotive.

TowerJazz will also present the latest design enablement tools and solutions jointly developed with its EDA partners, and its sponsors – Mentor, Empyrean, Silvaco and Xpeedic Technology –will share the latest design capabilities offered in collaboration with TowerJazz.

By stacking and connecting layers of stretchable circuits on top of one another, engineers have developed an approach to build soft, pliable “3D stretchable electronics” that can pack a lot of functions while staying thin and small in size. The work is published in the Aug. 13 issue of Nature Electronics.

This is the device compared to a US dollar coin. Credit: Zhenlong Huang

As a proof of concept, a team led by the University of California San Diego has built a stretchable electronic patch that can be worn on the skin like a bandage and used to wirelessly monitor a variety of physical and electrical signals, from respiration, to body motion, to temperature, to eye movement, to heart and brain activity. The device, which is as small and thick as a U.S. dollar coin, can also be used to wirelessly control a robotic arm.

“Our vision is to make 3D stretchable electronics that are as multifunctional and high-performing as today’s rigid electronics,” said senior author Sheng Xu, a professor in the Department of NanoEngineering and the Center for Wearable Sensors, both at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

Xu was named among MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 list in 2018 for his work in this area.

To take stretchable electronics to the next level, Xu and his colleagues are building upwards rather than outwards. “Rigid electronics can offer a lot of functionality on a small footprint–they can easily be manufactured with as many as 50 layers of circuits that are all intricately connected, with a lot of chips and components packed densely inside. Our goal is to achieve that with stretchable electronics,” said Xu.

The new device developed in this study consists of four layers of interconnected stretchable, flexible circuit boards. Each layer is built on a silicone elastomer substrate patterned with what’s called an “island-bridge” design. Each “island” is a small, rigid electronic part (sensor, antenna, Bluetooth chip, amplifier, accelerometer, resistor, capacitor, inductor, etc.) that’s attached to the elastomer. The islands are connected by stretchy “bridges” made of thin, spring-shaped copper wires, allowing the circuits to stretch, bend and twist without compromising electronic function.

Making connections

This work overcomes a technological roadblock to building stretchable electronics in 3D. “The problem isn’t stacking the layers. It’s creating electrical connections between them so they can communicate with each other,” said Xu. These electrical connections, known as vertical interconnect accesses or VIAs, are essentially small conductive holes that go through different layers on a circuit. VIAs are traditionally made using lithography and etching. While these methods work fine on rigid electronic substrates, they don’t work on stretchable elastomers.

So Xu and his colleagues turned to lasers. They first mixed silicone elastomer with a black organic dye so that it could absorb energy from a laser beam. Then they fashioned circuits onto each layer of elastomer, stacked them, and then hit certain spots with a laser beam to create the VIAs. Afterward, the researchers filled in the VIAs with conductive materials to electrically connect the layers to one another. And a benefit of using lasers, notes Xu, is that they are widely used in industry, so the barrier to transfer this technology is low.

Multifunctional ‘smart bandage’

The team built a proof-of-concept 3D stretchable electronic device, which they’ve dubbed a “smart bandage.” A user can stick it on different parts of the body to wirelessly monitor different electrical signals. When worn on the chest or stomach, it records heart signals like an electrocardiogram (ECG). On the forehead, it records brain signals like a mini EEG sensor, and when placed on the side of the head, it records eyeball movements. When worn on the forearm, it records muscle activity and can also be used to remotely control a robotic arm. The smart bandage also monitors respiration, skin temperature and body motion.

“We didn’t have a specific end use for all these functions combined together, but the point is that we can integrate all these different sensing capabilities on the same small bandage,” said co-first author Zhenlong Huang, who conducted this work as a visiting Ph.D. student in Xu’s research group.

And the researchers did not sacrifice quality for quantity. “This device is like a ‘master of all trades.’ We picked high quality, robust subcomponents–the best strain sensor we could find on the market, the most sensitive accelerometer, the most reliable ECG sensor, high quality Bluetooth, etc.–and developed a clever way to integrate all these into one stretchable device,” added co-first author Yang Li, a nanoengineering graduate student at UC San Diego in Xu’s research group.

So far, the smart bandage can last for more than six months without any drop in performance, stretchability or flexibility. It can communicate wirelessly with a smartphone or laptop up to 10 meters away. The device runs on a total of about 35.6 milliwatts, which is equivalent to the power from 7 laser pointers.

The team will be working with industrial partners to optimize and refine this technology. They hope to test it in clinical settings in the future.

By Laith Altimime

In a bid to reinvigorate Europe’s electronics strategy and strengthen the region’s position in key emerging technologies, European electronics industry CEOs in June called on public and private actors to accelerate collaboration at the European Union and national levels. The CEO’s proposed new strategic actions include creating a European Design Alliance to pool the expertise of design houses and forming an electronics education and skills task force consisting of representatives from industry, research, European institutions, member states and SEMI.

The business executive’s calls – embodied in “Boosting Electronics Value Chain in Europe,” a report submitted to Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, of the European Commission – come as global competition in the electronics industry intensifies. The document highlights Europe’s need to buttress its position amongst others in artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous driving and personalized healthcare – applications that rely on new semiconductor architectures, materials, equipment and design methodologies.

The European semiconductor industry plans to pour more than 50 billion EUR into technology development and innovation by 2025, deepening its investments in research, innovation and manufacturing to help drive Europe’s digital transformation.

For its part, SEMI, as the industry association connecting the electronics value chain, is well-positioned to bring together member companies and public actors to address key challenges facing the sector. This year in April, SEMI announced that Electronics System Design Alliance (ESD Alliance) will join SEMI, adding key electronics design companies to SEMI membership and unlocking the full potential of collaboration between electronics design and manufacturing.  With the ESD Alliance, SEMI adds the product design segment to the electronics supply chain, streamlining and connecting the full ecosystem. The integration also promises to support the industry coordination required to develop specialized (AI) chips used in various smart applications.

SEMI Europe is also accelerating its education and workforce development activities. SEMI Europe this year created its Workforce Development Council Europe, chaired by Emir Demircan, SEMI Europe’s senior manager of public policy, based in Brussels. The council is designed to connect electronics industry human resources representatives with members to evolve best practices in hiring that help Europe gain, train and retain world-class talent.

Other SEMI Europe workforce development activities include the following:

  • SEMI member forums across Europe are helping young talent with career opportunities in the semiconductor industry.
  • In November, SEMICON Europa will host a Career Café where STEM students will explore careers in electronics design and manufacturing.
  • With the participation of representatives from the European Commission, SEMI Europe’s Industry Strategy Symposium in April focused on strategies for attracting more skilled workers into electronics design and manufacturing.

Looking ahead, semiconductor sales is forecast to reach USD 1 trillion by 2030. The global semiconductor industry is at the heart of a new era of connectivity, developing breakthrough solutions for ascendant data-driven technologies such as AI and Internet of Things (IoT). SEMI Europe’s role in strengthening the region’s position in the global electronics industry to help drive this extraordinary growth is critical. SEMI Europe will continue to foster public-private partnerships to tackle industry challenges that are too big, too risky and too costly for companies and government institutions to address alone.

Contact: Laith Altimime, President, SEMI Europe, [email protected] ; Emir Demircan, Sr Manager Public Policy, [email protected]

Originally published on the SEMI blog.

The semiconductor industry today is faced with several substantial issues-not the least of which are the continuing rise in design costs for complex SoCs, the decrease in the incidence of first-time-right designs and the increase in the design cycle time against shrinking market windows and decreasing product life cycles. An additional factor has now been added to SoC design costs with the emergence of very complicated software applications intended to run on the SoC silicon. The costs of the software effort have outstripped the silicon design costs and have become the major part of the cost of these designs. IP integration is also a growing part of design costs. Semico’s new report SoC Silicon and Software 2018 Design Cost Analysis: How Rising Costs Impact SoC Design Starts addresses these and many other design concerns while reporting that the average design cost for Basic SoCs across all geometries in 2017 was $1.7 million.

“Analysis of design activity for the three types of SoC profiled in this report shows that while design costs at new nodes continue to increase, the average design cost at each node is not increasing as quickly, giving room for designers to still accomplish their silicon solutions at reasonable costs if they are prudent in their design selection,” says Rich Wawrzyniak, Sr. Market Analyst for ASIC & SoC at Semico. “For each of the three types of SoC there is still considerable activity at the older nodes of 90nm, 65nm and 40nm. Costs at these geometries are much less than at 10nm and 7nm so even though these newer designs cost much more, the average for all SoCs has dropped due to the increase in new designs for Basic SoC.”

Key findings of the report include:

  • The average design cost for Value Multicore SoCs across all geometries was $4.8M in 2017.
  • The average design cost for all SoCs across all geometries is forecast to increase to $5.3M by 2023.
  • The number of ‘first-time-right’ designs has dropped at every process geometry since the 180nm node.
  • Silicon design costs at the 7nm node for an Advanced Performance Multicore SoC first-time effort are projected to be 23% higher than at the 10nm node.

In a unique, insightful look at this constantly evolving market, Semico Research’s new report, SoC Silicon and Software 2018 Design Cost Analysis: How Rising Costs Impact SoC Design Starts, examines the primary forces and integration pressures that are driving this market today in 135 pages, with 41 tables and 64 graphs. This study analyzes many important questions facing the semiconductor industry today including:

  • What is the current cost for a Complex System-on-a-Chip (SoC) design, and what will it be in the near future?
  • Is it possible to do SoC designs without maximizing the costs for these designs?
  • What is the incidence of ‘first-time-right’ for these designs today and in the near future?
  • How is the design cycle time for these designs changing?
  • How do complicated software applications impact the design costs?
  • How fast are IP integration costs rising, and how high will they go?
  • What strategies are designers using to cope with rising design costs?
  • What is the average silicon design cost today for each process geometry and SoC type, and how quickly is it rising?
  • What impact will EDA tools that include some artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) functionality have on design costs for complex silicon?

Implantation of a stent-like flow diverter can offer one option for less invasive treatment of brain aneurysms – bulges in blood vessels – but the procedure requires frequent monitoring while the vessels heal. Now, a multi-university research team has demonstrated proof-of-concept for a highly flexible and stretchable sensor that could be integrated with the flow diverter to monitor hemodynamics in a blood vessel without costly diagnostic procedures.

Woon-Hong Yeo, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, holds a flow sensor on a stent backbone. (Credit: John Toon, Georgia Tech)

The sensor, which uses capacitance changes to measure blood flow, could reduce the need for testing to monitor the flow through the diverter. Researchers, led by Georgia Tech, have shown that the sensor accurately measures fluid flow in animal blood vessels in vitro, and are working on the next challenge: wireless operation that could allow in vivo testing.

The research was reported July 18 in the journal ACS Nano and was supported by multiple grants from Georgia Tech’s Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology, the University of Pittsburgh and the Korea Institute of Materials Science.

“The nanostructured sensor system could provide advantages for patients, including a less invasive aneurysm treatment and an active monitoring capability,” said Woon-Hong Yeo, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. “The integrated system could provide active monitoring of hemodynamics after surgery, allowing the doctor to follow up with quantitative measurement of how well the flow diverter is working in the treatment.”

Cerebral aneurysms occur in up to five percent of the population, with each aneurysm carrying a one percent risk per year of rupturing, noted Youngjae Chun, an associate professor in the Swanson School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. Aneurysm rupture will cause death in up to half of affected patients.

Endovascular therapy using platinum coils to fill the aneurysm sac has become the standard of care for most aneurysms, but recently a new endovascular approach – a flow diverter – has been developed to treat cerebral aneurysms. Flow diversion involves placing a porous stent across the neck of an aneurysm to redirect flow away from the sac, generating local blood clots within the sac.

“We have developed a highly stretchable, hyper-elastic flow diverter using a highly-porous thin film nitinol,” Chun explained. “None of the existing flow diverters, however, provide quantitative, real-time monitoring of hemodynamics within the sac of cerebral aneurysm. Through the collaboration with Dr. Yeo’s group at Georgia Tech, we have developed a smart flow-diverter system that can actively monitor the flow alterations during and after surgery.”

Repairing the damaged artery takes months or even years, during which the flow diverter must be monitored using MRI and angiogram technology, which is costly and involves injection of a magnetic dye into the blood stream. Yeo and his colleagues hope their sensor could provide simpler monitoring in a doctor’s office using a wireless inductive coil to send electromagnetic energy through the sensor. By measuring how the energy’s resonant frequency changes as it passes through the sensor, the system could measure blood flow changes into the sac.

“We are trying to develop a batteryless, wireless device that is extremely stretchable and flexible that can be miniaturized enough to be routed through the tiny and complex blood vessels of the brain and then deployed without damage,” said Yeo. “It’s a very challenging to insert such electronic system into the brain’s narrow and contoured blood vessels.”

The sensor uses a micro-membrane made of two metal layers surrounding a dielectric material, and wraps around the flow diverter. The device is just a few hundred nanometers thick, and is produced using nanofabrication and material transfer printing techniques, encapsulated in a soft elastomeric material.

“The membrane is deflected by the flow through the diverter, and depending on the strength of the flow, the velocity difference, the amount of deflection changes,” Yeo explained. “We measure the amount of deflection based on the capacitance change, because the capacitance is inversely proportional to the distance between two metal layers.”

Because the brain’s blood vessels are so small, the flow diverters can be no more than five to ten millimeters long and a few millimeters in diameter. That rules out the use of conventional sensors with rigid and bulky electronic circuits.

“Putting functional materials and circuits into something that size is pretty much impossible right now,” Yeo said. “What we are doing is very challenging based on conventional materials and design strategies.”

The researchers tested three materials for their sensors: gold, magnesium and the nickel-titanium alloy known as nitinol. All can be safely used in the body, but magnesium offers the potential to be dissolved into the bloodstream after it is no longer needed.

The proof-of-principle sensor was connected to a guide wire in the in vitro testing, but Yeo and his colleagues are now working on a wireless version that could be implanted in a living animal model. While implantable sensors are being used clinically to monitor abdominal blood vessels, application in the brain creates significant challenges.

“The sensor has to be completely compressed for placement, so it must be capable of stretching 300 or 400 percent,” said Yeo. “The sensor structure has to be able to endure that kind of handling while being conformable and bending to fit inside the blood vessel.”

The research included multiple contributors from different institutions, including Connor Howe from Virginia Commonwealth University; Saswat Mishra and Yun-Soung Kim from Georgia Tech, Youngjae Chun, Yanfei Chen, Sang-Ho Ye and William Wagner from the University of Pittsburgh; Jae-Woong Jeong from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology; Hun-Soo Byun from Chonnam National University; and Jong-Hoon Kim from Washington State University.

By Iris Tsou

The march to greater precision, efficiency and safety – the lifeblood of high-technology manufacturing facilities – has taken on a new urgency as emerging applications such artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 give new meaning to smart factories. Facing fiercer competition and ever more sophisticated fabrication processes, semiconductor fabs are under intense pressure to keep pace with new technologies as they work to upgrade. Nowhere are the stakes higher than in Taiwan, where high-tech manufacturing contributes mightily to the region’s GDP growth.

To help Taiwan fabs confront the challenges and opportunities of designing smarter factories, SEMI and its High-Tech Facility Committee hosted the High-Tech Facility Workshop in June. SEMICON Taiwan 2018 High-Tech Facility Pavilion exhibitors gathered to explore how they can build smarter factories by deploying smart surveillance and disaster prevention technologies along with smart communications systems that better use manufacturing data to drive new safety and product quality efficiencies.

During the workshop, SEMI High-Tech Facility Committee representatives shared strides it has made upgrading overseas facilities and developing standards to help establish smart factories in Taiwan.

SEMICON Taiwan – 5-7 September at Taipei’s Nangang Exhibition Center – is also an important event for advancing smart manufacturing in Taiwan. Nearly 30 leading global manufacturers will exhibit at the SEMICON Taiwan High-Tech Facility Pavilion. The venue covers operational aspects of semiconductor manufacturing vital to becoming smarter including energy savings, nano-contamination control, facility information modeling, precision instrumentation and control, fire protection, mechatronics, and automation control. The pavilion will also feature a series of theme events offering a comprehensive overview of topics including the latest practices for integrating smart facility capabilities from the perspective of an advanced fab designer.

At the TechXPOT stage, High-Tech Facility Pavilion exhibitors will also demonstrate the latest technology breakthroughs and cutting-edge smart factor solutions.

The September 6th High-Tech Facility International Forum at SEMICON Taiwan will again gather factory experts and thought leaders from industry and academia to examine “Effective Ways to Make a Facility Smart.“ Experts from industry heavyweights in the fields of wafer foundry, LCD, memory and semiconductor packaging including TSMC, UMC, Innolux, ASE, Micron Taiwan, Winbond and VIS will offer insights into key areas of high-tech facilities including facility electricity, machinery, water management, vaporization and automation systems. On the same day as the forum, the High-Tech Facility Get-Together and High-Tech Facility VIP Dinner will bring together industry elites, academic professionals, and government officials to explore partnership opportunities.

SEMI Taiwan and the High-Tech Facility Committee share HTF market trends information, technology updates and standards with SEMI members and exhibitors.

Founded in 2013, the High-Tech Facility Committee now has 85 corporate members. Dedicated to accelerating industry collaboration through the integration of Taiwan industrial, government and academic resources, the committee each year holds several group meetings focusing on topics including energy savings, earthquake and fire protection, nano-contamination control, and precision instrumentation and control to advance critical technologies and facilitate standardization. The committee also aims to help the industry become more competitive faster by promoting technology standards that boost productivity and reduce production costs.

Please visit www.semi.org and www.semicontaiwan.org for more information about SEMI’s high-tech facility initiatives.

Iris Tsou is a marketing specialist at SEMI Taiwan. 

Originally published on the SEMI blog.