Category Archives: MEMS

Nano-electronics research center imec and Synopsys, Inc. (NASDAQ: SNPS) today announced an interconnect resistivity model to support the screening and selection of alternative interconnect metals and liner-barrier materials at the 7nm node and beyond. With the continued scaling of advanced process nodes, the impact of parasitic interconnect resistance on the switching delay of standard cells rises considerably. The new model developed through this collaboration enables the evaluation of interconnect material and process options through simulations in the early stages of technology development, when wafer data is not available, and in the process optimization and integration stages of technology development, where it reduces expensive and time-consuming wafer-based iterations.

“We have already released to our partners a number of sets of model parameters related to various liner/barrier systems for Cu metallization or to alternative metals, such as Ru and Co, which they will use to screen metallization options for next-generation interconnect technologies,” stated Dan Mocuta, director, Logic Device and Integration at imec.

To use the new resistivity model, customers simulate the fabrication of the interconnect structure in 3D using the Synopsys process emulation tool Process Explorer, and then simulate the wire and via resistance in Raphael, the Synopsys gold standard interconnect field solver. This simulation flow accounts for the impact of layout rules, multi-patterning flows, and process-induced 3D features on the resistance of any conductive net in a multilayer interconnect stack, thereby predicting the influence of material, process and patterning choices on the interconnect resistance at scaled dimensions.

Imec has calibrated the resistivity model to wafer data for Cu, W, Ru and Co interconnects.

“The new resistivity model developed through this collaboration with imec is an important component of our pre-wafer simulation solution to enable our mutual customers to perform early screening of interconnect technology options at advanced nodes,” said Dr. Howard Ko, senior vice president and general manager of the Silicon Engineering Group at Synopsys.

Imec’s research into advanced logic scaling is performed in cooperation with imec’s key partners in its core CMOS programs including GlobalFoundries, Intel, Micron, SK Hynix, Samsung, TSMC, Huawei, Qualcomm and Sony.

imec synopsys 1 imec synopsys 2

3D model of a multilayer interconnect stack (a) after process emulations using the Synopsys Sentaurus™ Process Explorer and 3D local resistivity profile (b) within wires and vias

Imec, a nanoelectronics research center, today announced the opening of imec Florida, a new entity focusing on photonics and high-speed electronics IC design based in Osceola, Florida. Imec Florida kicked off with the signing of a collaboration agreement with the University of Central Florida (UCF), Osceola County and the International Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing Research (ICAMR), that is setting up fab facilities for the development and production of highly innovative III-V-on-silicon solutions for a broad range of applications including sensors, high-speed electronics and photonics.

Imec Florida will be established as a design center facilitating the collaboration between imec’s headquarters, based in Leuven, Belgium, and U.S.-based semiconductor and system companies, universities, and research institutes. Imec Florida’s initial focus will be the R&D of high speed electronics and photonics solutions, starting with an offering of IC design research for a broad set of semiconductor-based solutions such as THz and LIDAR sensors, imagers, and a broad range of sensors.  It will also provide IC design needs that will be driving the ICAMR manufacturing research. Through imec Florida, imec’s design, prototyping and low-volume production service – also named imec IC-link – will provide the US market low-cost access to advanced foundry services, helping entrepreneurs to (industry and academia) design innovative products and get them to market.

Funding for imec Florida will come from Osceola County, and the University of Central Florida. The new center will attract top talent through future strategic partnerships, with the aim to employ about 10 scientists and engineers by the end of the year and increase to 100 researchers in the next five years. Heading up the facility as General Manager will be imec’s Vice President Bert Gyselinckx who previously served as general manager at imec in Eindhoven, the Netherlands and helped to co-invent many technologies deployed by innovative semiconductor and consumer electronics companies.

“As the U.S. semiconductor market continues to strengthen with semiconductor manufacturing, equipment, materials and system innovation, we are extremely pleased to collaborate with partner organizations in Florida and see Osceola County in the Orlando region as an interesting location to drive the next phase of imec’s growth and innovation,” stated Luc Van den hove, president and CEO of imec. “Together with industrial and academic partners, we want to develop sustainable solutions and technology to accelerate innovation and stimulate economic growth within Osceola County and the State of Florida.”

“Imec’s international prestige gives us the opportunity to leverage its standing in a field that is growing exponentially in order to recruit more partners and funding for our work at the new Design Center and the Florida Advanced Manufacturing Research Center,” said Osceola County Commission Chairwoman Viviana Janer. “The relationships and people that imec brings to our operation are tangible ways that Osceola County’s 5-year, $15 million investment will be more than re-paid. It’s important to realize that the new Design Center is going to capture the attention of everyone in this field, thereby ensuring maximum utilization and value of the FAMRC.”

“The imec Design Center is the funnel that will fill ICAMR with high-value manufacturing opportunities and we will work closely with them to make sure our capabilities tightly align with their technology direction, said ICAMR CEO Chester Kennedy.  “This partnership is poised to shine the global high-tech spotlight on Central Florida.”

On July 11, 2016, imec will introduce imec Florida to the semiconductor industry at its annual Imec Technology Forum (ITF) USA, a half-day conference in San Francisco Calif., at the Marriott Marquis. ITF USA is part of imec’s prestigious worldwide ITF events, organized in conjunction with SEMICON West and supported by SEMI. With the theme ‘Towards the Ultimate System’, imec’s highly acclaimed speakers and industrial keynote speakers will look at the co-optimization of design and new technology, and how technology innovation can deliver the right building blocks to build these systems.

By James Hayward, Technology Analyst, IDTechEx

With hype around some of the core wearable technology sectors beginning to wane, IDTechEx have released their latest analysis of this diverse and growing industry in their brand new report Wearable Technology 2016-2026. The report finds the market to be worth over $30bn in 2016, with over $11bn of that coming from newly popular products including smartwatches and fitness trackers. However, despite the total market growing to over $150bn by 2026, IDTechEx forecast shake-ups in several prominent sectors, with commoditization hitting hard, and product form factors changing rapidly.

Global wearable technology forecast summary, including 39 forecast lines covering all prominent products today (e.g. smartwatches, fitness trackers, smart eyewear, smart clothing, medical devices and more), but also to many incumbent products (e.g. headphones, hearing aids, basic electronic watches and more). Source: IDTechEx Research report Wearable Technology 2016-2026.

Global wearable technology forecast summary, including 39 forecast lines covering all prominent products today (e.g. smartwatches, fitness trackers, smart eyewear, smart clothing, medical devices and more), but also to many incumbent products (e.g. headphones, hearing aids, basic electronic watches and more). Source: IDTechEx Research report Wearable Technology 2016-2026.

The IDTechEx report covers these trends in granular detail, including 39 separate forecast lines by product type and 60 formal company profiles and interviews compiled from primary research by IDTechEx’s expert analysts. The report also covers all of the industry megatrends that are driving innovation, demand and development, as well as describing application sectors including fitness & wellness, elite sportswear, healthcare & medical, infotainment, commercial, industrial, military, and others. For each, general sector-wide themes are described, but also detailed case studies are used to explain value propositions, end user needs and unmet problems that are driving the market forward.

Fuelled by a frenzy of hype, funding and global interest, wearable technology was catapulted to the top of the agenda for companies spanning the entire value chain and world. This investment manifested in hundreds of new products and extensive tailored R&D investigating relevant technology areas. However, the fickle nature of hype is beginning to show, and many companies are now progressing beyond discussing “wearables” to focus on the detailed and varied sub-sectors. Within this report, we include sections on each key of these key product areas, including fitness trackers, smartwatches, smart clothing, smart eyewear (including AR and VR), smart skin patches, headphones and more. For each, the key trends are discussed, the key players characterised, and qualified market forecasts provided.

IDTechEx’s expert analyst team has been covering this topic for over three years, including device level studies, but also looking to the component level at displays, sensors, batteries & power solutions, microcontrollers, e-textiles and haptics. This understanding of the entire value chain is used to qualify the market forecasts, and particularly when looking at the future of personal communication devices.

In a unique aspect of this report, IDTechEx outlines a long term case for standalone wearable communication devices as a future evolution of the smartphone. Today, most smartwatches and many fitness trackers still rely, at least partially, on a connection to a smartphone hub. The ubiquity of the smartphone as a central platform has been a key enabler for growth in wearables so far, but all of the largest manufacturers now look to a future, where the hub itself may become wearable. In the report, the authors describes the growth central, personal hub providing connectivity to peripheral devices, whether they be displays, sensor platforms or otherwise. With many smartwatches already beginning to move in this direction, we extend this case further providing a 10 year forecast for growth of devices of this type.

This is the most thorough and comprehensive report covering the entire wearable technology ecosystem. It provides detailed description of all of the hardware challenges and opportunities across the varied device types, and draws from IDTechEx’s case study database of around 1000 companies in the wearable technology value chain. The report lists around 500 companies actively making products (both hardware and software) to support this report. For full details of Wearable Technology 2016-2026, including the table of contents, please see www.IDTechEx.com/wearable.

 

EV Group (EVG), a supplier of wafer bonding and lithography equipment for the MEMS, nanotechnology and semiconductor markets, today introduced new capabilities on the EVG ComBond automated high-vacuum wafer bonding platform specifically designed to support high-volume manufacturing (HVM) of advanced MEMS devices. These capabilities include a new vacuum bond alignment module that provides sub-micron face-to-face alignment accuracy essential for wafer-level MEMS packaging, and a new bake module that performs critical process steps to achieve outstanding bond quality and performance of encapsulated MEMS devices.

The addition of these two new modules–coupled with existing capabilities on the highly configurable EVG ComBond platform such as room-temperature covalent bonding of engineered substrates–enables customers to meet the wafer bonding requirements for both current and emerging types of MEMS devices. Examples include gyroscopes, microbolometers, and advanced sensors for autonomous cars, virtual reality headsets and other applications.

“When EV Group introduced the EVG ComBond platform, we set a new standard in high-vacuum wafer bonding by building the product around a modular, highly customizable cluster design concept. This has enabled us to continually expand the capabilities of the platform over time, with applications ranging from advanced engineered substrates, power devices and solar cells to high-performance logic and ‘Beyond CMOS’ devices,” stated Paul Lindner, executive technology director,
EV Group. “With the addition of new vacuum alignment and bake modules, those wafer bonding capabilities have been expanded yet again to address the volume manufacturing needs for high-end MEMS devices.”

Challenges of scaling MEMS wafer bonding into production

Many MEMS devices have extremely small moving parts, which must be protected from the external environment. Wafer-level capping can seal a wafer’s worth of MEMS devices in one operation, and these capped devices can then be packaged into much simpler and lower-cost packages. Metal-based aligned wafer bonding is the preferred approach to MEMS wafer bonding, but is challenging to implement due to the high process temperatures involved as well as the presence of oxides that form on the bonding metal layers. As MEMS die and feature sizes decrease, achieving tighter wafer alignment accuracy also becomes increasingly important.

At the same time, vacuum encapsulation is increasingly needed for certain MEMS devices in order to reduce power consumption caused by parasitic drag, reduce convection heat transfer, or prevent oxide corrosion. Maintaining the required vacuum level for the entire wafer bonding process has been a key challenge for ramping these devices into high-volume production.

The EVG ComBond platform provides a complete end-to-end high-vacuum environment (10-8 mbar range) throughout all wafer handling, pre-bonding and bonding processes. This modular configuration significantly improves serviceability, as modules can be swapped out without breaking the vacuum level within the cluster or modules and interrupting tool operation.

New MEMS wafer bonding capabilities

New to the EVG ComBond platform is the vacuum alignment module (VAM) with wafer clamping, which enables sub-micron face-to-face alignment accuracy based on EVG’s proprietary SmartView alignment process, as well as backside and IR alignment, in a high-vacuum environment. Also new is the programmable dehydration bake and getter activation module, which accelerates the removal of sticking gas molecules prior to bonding the substrates–resulting in improved bond quality as well as reduced gas pressure in device cavities.

In addition, the EVG ComBond platform features an optional ComBond Activation Module (CAM), which enables covalent and oxide-free wafer bonding processes at room temperature or low temperatures. Integrated into the ComBond platform, the CAM allows low-temperature bonding of metals, such as aluminum, that re-oxidize quickly in ambient environments–enabling customers to reduce production costs and achieve higher wafer-bonding throughputs.

The EVG ComBond platform with the new alignment and programmable dehydration bake and getter activation modules is currently available and can be demonstrated at EVG’s headquarters.

Media, analysts and potential customers interested in learning more about EVG’s suite of wafer bonding solutions, including the EVG ComBond platform, are invited to visit the company’s booth #1017 in the South Hall of the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, Calif., at the SEMICON West show on July 12-14.

By Jean-Eric Michallet, Leti Vice President for Sales and Marketing

The pervasiveness of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its connections ranging from $1 objects to connected cars requires security to be reliable, simple, safe and affordable. Because the Internet of Things is made up of objects (hardware) connected to a network (software), security has to be factored in from the application or use’s conception. In short, assuring IoT security will require strategies to manage the entire value and supply chains.

Attendees at the recent Leti Innovation Day 2016 in Lyon, France, heard several variations of that message from industry experts and Leti scientists, against a backdrop of a proliferation of security and data threats.

Didier Lamouche, CEO of Oberthur Technologies, a provider of embedded security software products and services, noted industry forecasts of 10 billion connected devices shipped annually by 2020. This amounts to an exponential increase in security risks, as well. “This is the wave we have to catch,” he said.

Security is a brand problem

Recalling the 2013 data breach at Target in the U.S., in which 40 million credit and debit card numbers and 70 million items of customer personal information were compromised, Lamouche said that cybersecurity is not only a problem for security officers and CIOs. It has become a problem for CEOs and board of directors, as the 2014 resignation of Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel showed. In fact, he said, cybersecurity is becoming a brand problem, because of the severe damage fraud and data breaches can cause for a company.

Retail is not the only at-risk industry. Lamouche noted that more than 76 million Sony PlayStation user accounts were breached and 3.6 million connected vehicles in the U.S. and Europe have been hacked.

In recent years, “card not present” (CNP) transactions, primarily online purchases, accounted for approximately 65 percent of fraud in Europe, Australia and Canada, and 49 percent in the U.S., which still amounted to $6 billion in 2014.

Credits cards with continuously updated security codes

To address the growth of CNP fraud, Oberthur has developed MOTION CODE for credit card issuers. It secures online transactions by automatically and randomly updating a cryptogram security code on the back of the card. If the card is lost or stolen, it can be rendered useless quickly.

Keynoting the session on “Strengthening Security with Advanced Technologies,” Jean-Marie Saint-Paul, Europe application director for Mentor Graphics, outlined numerous security challenges involving hardware. 

Who can you trust?

Thieves looking for ways to steal money, companies looking for competitors’ vulnerabilities and even users “playing” with the system can create risks. The supply chain presents numerous risks, as well. Specific hardware challenges include:

  • A “vast space” of possible intrusions during IC, printed circuit board and embedded design and in the supply chain
  • Unknown bugs and frequent field updates that open back doors for attackers
  • The “fading of a trusted foundry” and proposed solutions that may not be viable
  • Counterfeit ICs that cause economic loss similar to yield loss discovered much later
  • For mission-critical apps, fake ICs that compromise devices risking security and safety

“Whatever structure we put in place, we have to put it in place with something we trust,” he said.

Digital disruption across the board

Borrowing information from IBM, Saint-Paul closed his presentation with a slide that highlights some of the most disruptive changes in business, industry and society at large that digital technology has enabled.

  • World’s largest taxi company owns no taxis (Uber)
  • Largest accommodation provider owns no real estate (Airbnb)
  • Largest phone company owns no telco infrastructure (Skype)
  • World’s most valuable retailer owns no inventory (Alibaba)
  • Most popular media owner creates no content (Facebook)
  • Fastest-growing banks have no actual money (SocietyOne)
  • World’s largest movie house owns no cinemas (Netflix)
  • Largest software vendors don’t write apps (Apple, Google)

The slide also asked when disruption will happen in semiconductors and electronics, when the world’s largest trusted foundry will own no fab or equipment, the top trusted contract manufacturer will own no assembly line and the leading secure electronics supplier will not purchase boards or chips. Will it be true? Maybe not, Saint-Paul said, but the industry needs some new models to reinvent itself.

Sameer Sharma, general manager of Intel’s IoT Group, said the IoT will provide pervasive, real-time intelligence from the physical world to data centers and the cloud: mobile devices via networks, and industrial and home applications via gateways. He cited a projection of 50 billion devices sharing 44 zetabytes of data.

Intel and Leti recently signed a multi-year collaboration agreement involving a variety of subjects such as making the IoT more secure, enabling 5G networks and device innovation, and driving the future of high-performance computing. 

85 percent of systems not connected

Combining revealing statistics from the past with projections about the direction the industry is headed, Sharma noted that the rapidly evolving digital era is spurring transformation across many fields, supported by a shift to open standards. Fixed-function ASICs are giving way to programmable architectures, dedicated appliances are now parts of virtualized systems, and purpose-built hardware is transforming into general-purpose hardware and software-defined functions.

Dramatically declining costs are a key driver for this transformation. In the past 10 years, the costs for sensors have fallen 2x, the cost of bandwidth has dropped 40x and the cost of processing 60x.

One of the most arresting facts Sharma shared relates to the huge potential, and need, for more hardware and software systems to keep up with the exponential growth of connected devices. Eighty-five percent of deployed systems are not connected and do not share data with each other or the cloud.

IoT threat landscape

Even so, Sharma said, attacks on IoT devices will increase rapidly due to hyper-growth in the number of connected objects, “poor security hygiene” and high value of data on those devices. A recent study of IoT devices showed that an average of “25 holes or risks of compromising the home network” were found on every device evaluated.

Sharma outlined a path to IoT security paved by infrastructure, end-to-end security, and 5G network and connectivity and standards. He said the Intel IoT Platform offers secure, scalable and interoperable building blocks for data acquisition, analytics and actions to improve business and peoples’ lives. Like other speakers, Sharma emphasized that security must be part of system concept and design.

“Security cannot be an add-on. Those days are gone,” he said.

Devices to protect biological, radiological and chemical data

Leti’s Alain Merle noted that privacy and security far outweigh other user concerns about connected devices. Integration in advanced technology, a focus of Leti R&D, is required, including use of security primitives, or low-level cryptographic algorithms. Secure IoT nodes face a complex array of potential weaknesses beyond physical attacks, such as attacks through communication interfaces, fault injection (glitches, light, laser, electromagnetism) and software, in which a single error can open the door to a hacker.

Beyond its cybersecurity programs, Leti is working with its partners to develop dedicated security devices to protect biological, radiological, chemical and weapons data. CESTI is Leti’s evaluation laboratory to determine whether security components and devices are designed and manufactured to prevent breaches and whether they are capable of withstanding attacks from terrorists, criminals or others.

The CESTI lab has evaluated products from leading companies such as SAFRAN, Samsung, ATMEL, STMicroelectronics, Gemalto, Oberthur and Inside Secure. The lab is part of Leti’s Strategic Security and Defense Programs, which promotes the development of innovative security solutions for information and communication (ICT) technologies for transfer to defense and commercial markets.

‘System approach with partners’

In her closing remarks, Leti CEO Marie Semeria noted that reliability, security and privacy are “must haves” to support the many key uses of digital technology. “Leti relies on a combination of hardware and software, so we pursue system approaches with our partners,” she said.

Focusing on micro- and nanotechnologies, architectures, tools and design methodologies, Semeria underlined that Leti is a worldwide recognized important center of competencies in developing innovations to propose efficient and reliable elements & architectures for emergent computing systems. She highlighted several recent Leti innovations for the Internet of Things and advanced computing for health, automotive and other sectors.

Leti has unique know-how and access to shielding, sensors, architectures and embedded software technologies for designing ASICs and SOCs for security applications. Moreover, its unique concentration of experts in materials, technologies integration, design and systems, even in biology and clinical domains, allows Leti to make the best trade offs possible between security, such as resistance to attacks, and application constraints, such as power, cost and performance.

Leti will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year as part of Leti Innovation Day in Grenoble.

PC shipments in India totalled nearly 2 million units in the first quarter of 2016, a 7.4 percent decrease over the first quarter of 2015, according to Gartner, Inc.

“Consumers accounted for 45 percent of total PC sales in the first quarter of 2016, down from 48 percent in the first quarter of 2015,” said Vishal Tripathi, research director at Gartner. “There was decline in both the enterprise and consumer segments in buying in the first quarter of 2016. With the first quarter being the end of the financial year for some companies, there were expectations that enterprises would exhaust their budgets. However, it did not have much of an impact on the PC market, and the market continues to face a challenging time.”

White boxes (including parallel imports), which accounted for 28 percent of the overall desktop market, declined 6 percent in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015. In the first quarter, mobile PCs declined by 13 percent year-on-year primarily due to a lack of enthusiasm in consumer buying. In the first quarter of 2016, PC vendors had excess inventory that was carried forward from the fourth quarter of 2015 . Gartner analysts believe that inventory will be carried forward into the second quarter of 2016.

HP was in the number one position in PC shipments in India in the first quarter of 2016 (see Table 1) due to a strong presence in channels and online consumer purchases.

Table 1

India PC Market Share Estimates for First Quarter of 2016 (Percentage of Shipments)

Vendors

1Q16 Market Share (%)

1Q15 Market Share (%)

HP

25.0

25.8

Dell

23.5

23.1

Lenovo

19.4

19.6

Acer

12.2

10.5

Others

19.9

21.0

Total

100.0

100.0

Gartner (June 2016)

Note: PC shipments include desk-based and mobile PCs.

Driven by the increase in global demand for sensors from the smartphone and automotive markets, Amkor Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMKR), a provider of semiconductor packaging and test services, today announced it is ramping up a new MEMS and sensor packaging line at its facility in Shanghai. This new line will build on the expertise developed at Amkor’s MEMS packaging line in the Philippines, which has produced more than 2.1 billion units of MEMS and sensors since 2011.

“Because the package influences device performance, MEMS and sensor development requires close collaboration between device technologists and packaging engineers,” said John Donaghey, Amkor’s corporate vice president, Mainstream Products business unit. “Our Shanghai expansion allows us to better serve customers in Greater China and internationally.”

The sensor content of smartphones, Internet of Things devices, and smart automobiles is increasing rapidly. According to Yole Développement, this has spurred unit growth in the MEMS market to an expected 13% compound annual growth rate through 2021. Additionally, miniaturization and the need for advanced MEMS and sensors are driving the need for “sensor fusion,” which integrates more functionality into a single package.

The new MEMS and sensor line in Shanghai uses Amkor’s standard strip-based processes, and offers leading-edge test protocols to speed time-to-market.

A research team at Clarkson University reports an interesting conclusion that could have major impacts on the future of nano-manufacturing. Their analysis for a model of the process of random sequential adsorption (RSA) shows that even a small imprecision in the position of the lattice landing sites can dramatically affect the density of the permanently formed deposit.

With the advent of nanotechnology, not only can we deposit tiny particles, but the target surfaces or substrates can be tailored to control the resulting structures.

This article addresses the precision that must exist in the pattern of the target surface, in order to achieve high perfection and high coverage in the pattern of deposited particles. To do this, it compares RSA on three types of surfaces: a continuous (non-patterned) lattice, a precisely patterned surface, and a surface with small imprecisions in the pattern. The researchers find that very small imprecisions can make RSA proceed as if the surface is continuous. The consequence is that the deposition process is less efficient, and the ultimate coverage is much lower. In the process of RSA, a continuous surface is covered slowly with a larger fraction of the area remaining uncovered than a precisely lattice-patterned surface. In the past when surfaces on which microscopic particles were deposited were naturally flat (continuous) or had a lattice-structure, the importance of small imprecisions had not been recognized.

The researchers explain their analysis this week in the Journal of Chemical Physics, from AIP Publishing.

Vladimir Privman at Clarkson University has been involved in studying aspects of such systems since 2007; however this study, conducted with graduate student Han Yan, was the first to consider the imprecision in the surface lattice-site localization, rather than in the particle size uniformity.

Initially suggested by computer modeling, their results were later derived by analytical model considerations which are novel for the research field of RSA.

“The greatest difficulty was to understand and accept the initial numerical finding that suggested results that seemed counterintuitive,” Privman explained. “Once accepted, we could actually confirm the initial findings, as well as generalize and systematize them by analytical arguments.”

Pre-patterned substrates have been studied for applications ranging from electronics to optics, to sensors, and to directed crystal growth. The reported results suggest that efforts at precise fixed positioning and object-sizing in nano-manufacturing might be counterproductive if done as part of forming structures by RSA, under practically irreversible conditions. A certain degree of relaxation, to allow objects to “wiggle their way” into matching positions, may actually be more effective in improving both the density and rate of formation of the desired dense structures, Privman said.

This work has implications that the team is preparing to explore.

“Now that we have realized that not only particle non-uniformity, but also substrate-pattern imprecision have substantial effects on the dynamics of the RSA process, we will begin studying various systems and patterning geometries, expanding beyond our original model,” Privman said.

Scientists and doctors in recent decades have made vast leaps in the treatment of cardiac problems – particularly with the development in recent years of so-called “cardiac patches,” swaths of engineered heart tissue that can replace heart muscle damaged during a heart attack.

Thanks to the work of Charles Lieber and others, the next leap may be in sight.

The Mark Hyman, Jr. Professor of Chemistry and Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Lieber, postdoctoral fellow Xiaochuan Dai and other co-authors of a study that describes the construction of nanoscale electronic scaffolds that can be seeded with cardiac cells to produce a “bionic” cardiac patch. The study is described in a June 27 paper published in Nature Nanotechnology.

“I think one of the biggest impacts would ultimately be in the area that involves replaced of damaged cardiac tissue with pre-formed tissue patches,” Lieber said. “Rather than simply implanting an engineered patch built on a passive scaffold, our works suggests it will be possible to surgically implant an innervated patch that would now be able to monitor and subtly adjust its performance.”

Once implanted, Lieber said, the bionic patch could act similarly to a pacemaker – delivering electrical shocks to correct arrhythmia, but the possibilities don’t end there.

“In this study, we’ve shown we can change the frequency and direction of signal propagation,” he continued. “We believe it could be very important for controlling arrhythmia and other cardiac conditions.”

Unlike traditional pacemakers, Lieber said, the bionic patch – because its electronic components are integrated throughout the tissue – can detect arrhythmia far sooner, and operate at far lower voltages.

“Even before a person started to go into large-scale arrhythmia that frequently causes irreversible damage or other heart problems, this could detect the early-stage instabilities and intervene sooner,” he said. “It can also continuously monitor the feedback from the tissue and actively respond.”

“And a normal pacemaker, because it’s on the surface, has to use relatively high voltages,” Lieber added.

The patch might also find use, Lieber said, as a tool to monitor the responses under cardiac drugs, or to help pharmaceutical companies to screen the effectiveness of drugs under development.

Likewise, the bionic cardiac patch can also be a unique platform, he further mentioned, to study the tissue behavior evolving during some developmental processes, such as aging, ischemia or differentiation of stem cells into mature cardiac cells.

Although the bionic cardiac patch has not yet been implanted in animals, “we are interested in identifying collaborators already investigating cardiac patch implantation to treat myocardial infarction in a rodent model,” he said. “I don’t think it would be difficult to build this into a simpler, easily implantable system.”

In the long term, Lieber believes, the development of nanoscale tissue scaffolds represents a new paradigm for integrating biology with electronics in a virtually seamless way.

Using the injectable electronics technology he pioneered last year, Lieber even suggested that similar cardiac patches might one day simply be delivered by injection.

“It may actually be that, in the future, this won’t be done with a surgical patch,” he said. “We could simply do a co-injection of cells with the mesh, and it assembles itself inside the body, so it’s less invasive.”

Presto Engineering Inc., a semiconductor product engineering and supply chain service provider, announced today that it has signed a multi-year supply agreement with NAGRA, a Kudelski Group company in secure digital TV access and management systems. Presto will provide supply chain management and production services for several of NAGRA’s key products in the Pay TV market.

“We are delighted that NAGRA has placed trust in Presto to be its production partner for volume products,” said Michel Villemain, CEO, Presto Engineering. “Leveraging team and expertise acquired from INSIDE Secure in 2015, this is a natural complement to our strategy of deploying an independent subcontract back-end manufacturing and supply chain service for the secure card industry and IoT markets.”

Providing full production support and secured back-end operations (EAL5+), Presto Engineering will leverage the teams, operations and platforms it has established in France (Meyreuil) and Asia (Thailand, Taiwan and Hong Kong) to provide supply chain services for NAGRA.

“We wanted to secure a rapid and trouble-free transition for the production of some of our important products,” said Maurice Van Riek, Senior Vice President, Head of Content & Asset Security, NAGRA. “Presto Engineering has demonstrated flexibility, dedication, and a high degree of expertise in developing global solutions, which will ensure continuity and performance through the transition and in production. We are very pleased to initiate this partnership with them.”