Feb 2 2013
American Semiconductor, Inc. today announced they had received the prestigious 2013 FLEXI Award presented by the FlexTech Alliance at the 12th Annual Flexible Electronics and Displays conference in Phoenix, Arizona.
The awards celebrate organizations that are leading development in flexible and printed electronics with innovative and commercially viable products and technologies. Entries for this award were considered based on the most innovative flexible or printed electronics product announced in the last twelve months. Judging criteria included product design and ingenuity, potential market adoption and revenue generation.
American Semiconductor was the recipient of the FLEXI Innovation award for its Flexible Hybrid Systems that combine printed electronics with FleX™ Silicon-on-Polymer™. FleX is a proprietary process that converts standard silicon wafers into flexible wafers and ICs. FleX is compatible with printed electronics materials such that high performance ICs including memory and logic can be integrated with printed sensors and circuitry to create Flexible Hybrid Systems.
“Flexible Hybrid Systems create a completely new class of electronics capability for flexible and conformally mounted systems,” said Doug Hackler, President and CEO of American Semiconductor. “Flexible, conformal electronics enable a wide variety of new applications in medical, aerospace, and commercial markets. We are working to make FleX easily accessible to system designers as demonstrated by our partnership with TowerJazz Semiconductor to make their CS18 foundry CMOS available with a native FleX Process Design Kit.”
“FleX ICs and Flexible Hybrid Systems have demonstrated feasibility and prototypes for many useful applications,” said Rich Chaney, General Manager of American Semiconductor. “Flexible hybrid sensor systems can be applied to non-flat surfaces or even embedded in structural laminates for applications such as antennas, structural health monitoring, and even consumer devices. In addition to making sensor systems easier to implement structurally, Flexible Hybrid Systems improve sensor performance by moving the signal processing as close to the sensor as possible. This also allows sensor systems to communicate over a data bus, eliminating signal cables and saving size, weight, and power.”
American Semiconductor offers full support for FleX IC and flexible hybrid system development. This includes IC design support for foundry CMOS processes, including TowerJazz CS18-FleX. Design support is available for full custom IC design, IP development or integration, or any part of the design flow a customer might want assistance with. Engineering support for flexible hybrid systems includes printed electronics design, antenna design and fabrication, FleX integration, and prototype development.