Gity Samadi

Edge AI is a fundamental technology for applications that require real-time decision-making. Contrary to cloud-based AI solutions that specialize in large and complex tasks, edge AI is embedded directly into local devices, allowing for lower-latency decision-making for less bandwidth consumption. These properties are essential for advancing technologies like 6G, autonomous vehicles, industrial IoT solutions, and more. However, edge AI can’t be achieved with traditional silicon because it requires more efficient thermal management, higher performance, and lower power than silicon can deliver. To address these limitations, the Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) technology platform offers a path forward. SOI is a layered silicon substrate technology with a silicon device layer on top, an insulating silicon dioxide layer in the middle, and a thick silicon base at the bottom. This structure disconnects devices from the bulk substrate, enabling major performance improvements for faster and more power-efficient ICs and photonics devices. In addition, FD, or fully depleted SOI (FD-SOI), is a subcategory of SOI that offers even higher performance and lower power usage.According to Michaël Tchagaspanian, Executive Vice President of Technology Strategic Partnerships at CEA-Leti, SOI is not just an alternative material. Instead, it’s a foundational technology that’s crucial for advancing the next wave of edge AI innovation. Therefore, to accelerate its advancement, CEA-Leti is combining its four decades of pioneering research with the cooperative efforts of the SEMI SOI Industry Consortium.CEA-Leti’s HistoryFor nearly 50 years, CEA-Leti has been at the forefront of SOI leadership. The company began in 1980 with its research into radiation-hardened electronics, which led to breakthroughs that enabled the Smart Cut™ process. Smart Cut ultimately served as the foundation for enabling SOI wafers to become a commercially viable global standard.This legacy also paved the way for much of the cutting-edge R D of today, including the FD-SOI Next Generation 10-7 nm program. This effort leverages flexible back-biasing to allow dynamic control over power consumption, leading to substantial efficiency gains.Tackling Tomorrow’s Challenges: A Sustainable FutureCEA-Leti’s deep SOI expertise allows it to address many of edge AI’s environmental challenges. To promote energy efficiency, CEA-Leti is working to advance silicon photonics while at the same time, incorporating the comprehensive PPAC-E framework across its new technology developments. The organization also works toward reducing energy through its fully integrated neural-network-on-chips technology that uses hybrid memory. This effort supports ultra-low-power, on-chip learning and inference for applications like autonomous vehicles, medical sensors, and others. Finally, CEA-Leti works to reduce greenhouse gases through its involvement in the GENESIS project, plus its ongoing efforts in eco-design and lifecycle analysis. The SOI Industry Consortium: Accelerating Industrial AdoptionAs part of its partnership, the SOI Industry Consortium works to ensure that CEA-Leti’s lab innovations can be seamlessly integrated into global production. This "lab-to-fab" model can be seen in the volume production of FD-SOI transistors from leading companies like STMicroelectronics and GlobalFoundries. The Consortium helps achieve volume production through its three-part approach: Secure the supply chain, reduce SOI adoption barriers, and close the specialized skills gap. To promote a healthy supply chain, the Consortium offers a platform that brings lab-to-fab solutions for SOI wafers. This is achieved through leading-edge development capabilities at CEA-LETI, Soitec and its Foundry manufacturing partners, with additional support from leading wafer suppliers like Shin-Etsu, GlobalWafers and Okmetic.It lowers SOI adoption barriers by collaborating with EDA leaders to standardize design tools and methodologies, ensuring robust proven design flows fully leveraging SOI technology.Finally, the Consortium supports training initiatives that address the SOI industry’s specialized skills gap. Partners like Synopsys also provide extensive training options, equipping engineers with the expertise to master SOI designs. SOI is helping the innovations of tomorrow become a practical reality. CEA-Leti’s leadership, combined with the global reach of the SOI Industry Consortium, allows the SOI ecosystem to optimize for low-power and sustainability while driving the next generation of high-performance systems. Gity Samadi is Senior Director of R D at SEMI.

The hand has never been so sensitive. A sleek sensorized glove that monitors pressure to human hands – and objects they touch – for automotive, consumer packaging, robotics and medical applications just took a step closer to real-world use.

The SEMI FlexTech R&D program recently completed project FT19-19-190 with SAFI-Tech to create a solder material with a substantially lower melting point than conventional solder paste, reducing the thermal stresses created by high-temperature processing used for smaller packaging technologies.

New treatments for vascular disease. Optimized agricultural production. Beefed up performance of wearable devices and flexible displays. Four students with their sights set on making the world a better place won Innovators of the Future awards at the 20th Annual FLEX Conference in late February after presenting novel ideas for advancing flexible electronics in the popular student poster event. It was clear that all of these young innovators are working on projects with the potential to impact our lives in the near future. Their work is critical to advancing products, devices and basic research in flexible electronics. Posters created by the 17 students who competed for the awards were judged by a multidisciplinary panel of industry experts. The posters reflected a broad range of applications enabled by flexible hybrid devices and covered technology for wearables, medical devices and precision agriculture. Innovators of the Future Award Winners Robert Herbert from the Georgia Institute of Technology won first place for his paper Smart and Connected Stent System with Nanomembrane Soft Sensors for Wireless Monitoring of Hemodynamics. Vascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for over 30% of all fatalities. Early diagnosis and monitoring blood pressure and flow rates are critical to effective treatment. Herbert’s poster introduced a less costly, less invasive and more revealing (spoiler alert) sensor system that uses a flexible, wireless biosensor system with an inductive medical stent and capacitive pressure sensors. The laser-machined stent uses multi-layered material integration to function as an inductive coil for wireless communication while maintaining mechanical properties similar to conventional vascular stents. The stent and sensor system can be easily deployed using conventional catheter procedures. Watch his presentation. Jose Waimin from Purdue University’s School of Materials Engineering was one of two second-place winners for his poster that shows how real-time monitoring of ion concentration, moisture, pH, microbial activity and other key metrics in agricultural production can optimize crop yields while reducing environmental impacts. His work presented a scalable alternative for manufacturing low-cost flexible sensors that can be used in an array of applications. Electrodes are manufactured in a Roll-to-Roll (R2R) process to enables fast production at a very low cost per device. Watch his talk. Benham Garakani from Binghamton University, Center for Advanced Microelectronics Manufacturing (CAMM) was the other second-place winner for his paper Electromechanical Behavior of Flexible Silver Paste and Highly Stretchable Liquid Metal for Wearable Electronics. Garakani explored how to improve fabrication of reliable, comfortable wearable devices to boost performance and functionality using substrates such as nonwoven high-density polyethylene fibers (HDPE) and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). Garakani also examined the electromechanical reliability of screen-printed silver trace on HDPE fibers and stencil-printed liquid metal (Ga-In-Sn alloy) on TPU during isothermal fatigue cycling. Watch his presentation. Sridhar Sivapurapu from the Georgia Institute of Technology won third place for his poster Flexible and Ultra-Thin 30µm Glass Substrates for RF and mmWave Flex Applications. Sivapurapu’s poster addressed the increasing demand for maximizing the mechanical flexibility of flexible displays while maintaining or improving their electrical performance. Sivapurapu focused on both electrical and mechanical properties for determining the viability of ultra-thin glass stack-ups for flexible RF applications by benchmarking the electrical performance of the ultra-thin glass stack-up to 110 GHz. He also examined electrical characterization during bending tests using free arc bending. Watch his talk. The Innovators of the Future award was sponsored by FlexEnable, a technology provider that develops flexible organic electronics technologies and OTFT materials. All FLEX Conference 2021 presentations are available through March 26, 2021 by registering for the event. Gity Samadi is co-chair of the FLEX Conference student poster awards and program manager at SEMI FlexTech.

Since 2015, FlexTech has funded three projects with ITN Energy Systems, based in Littleton, Colorado. The projects all draw on a unique concept of using thin, flexible ceramic sheets as both a substrate for functional devices and as an integral part of the hermetic packaging to support paper-thin FHE products. Each program was increasingly sophisticated, enabling a larger variety of functions to be integrated into a common package. Independent functions such as energy storage, energy harvesting, or printed microelectronic circuits are deposited on their own ceramic substrate and the layers vertically stacked and interconnected into a monolithic structure that combines several functions in the smallest possible package volume.The ITN projects provide excellent examples of the power of collaborative research and development to help de-risk investments in next-generation electronics. All the projects were conducted with technical contributions from small and large businesses as well as university partners. The programs were funded by the U.S. Army Research Laboratories (ARL), directed by industry leaders and managed by SEMI FlexTech with the focus on utilizing the advantages of flexible hybrid and printed electronics (FHE) to create lighter-weight, lower-power, more conformable electronics than available commercially today. Markets ready to take advantage of FHE developments include healthcare, aerospace, mobility, consumer electronics, industrial electronics.ITN was founded in 1995 to focus on researching and developing technologies related to aerospace, energy and the environment for defense and commercial marketplaces. Its business model employs collaborative R D projects to explore, develop and validate promising next-generation clean energy technologies with an emphasis on tackling the manufacturing challenges that enable low-cost, high-volume production of thin-film devices on flexible substrates. Those technologies that meet the technical and business requirements of the market are commercialized via focused, spin-out companies with five such spin-outs formed so far. The work on ultra-thin batteries needed by the SEMI FlexTech community readily slid into their portfolio of projects.Project 1 – New Solid-State Lithium BatteryThe first project kicked off in 2016, with ENrG, and successfully supported the development and validation of novel Solid-State Lithium Battery (SSLB) products with total packaged thickness ranging from 50-250 microns. The SSLB proved to have substantial advantages in form factor and performance when compared with both commercial-off-the-shelf batteries and emerging technologies. For example, the SSLB provided more than double the operating time in a substantially smaller package in powering an audio device supplied by SEMI FlexTech partner companies.By avoiding the use of liquid electrolytes, the ITN SSLB also eliminates flammability issues while still allowing the benefits of lithium-based battery chemistry. The SSLB boasted many attributes attractive to the FlexTech community, including: Ultra-thin form factor, i.e. 250 microns thick, mAh class packaged batteries High volumetric energy density, i.e. baseline products with ~500 Wh/l and a roadmap to 1,000Wh/l The ability to support high current pulsing, i.e. current pulses at 4-10C rates, in support of demanding FHE duty cycles High temperature compatibility with solder reflow and other FHE integration schemes Rechargeability with high capacity retention at 1,000 cycles This new SSLB has formed the foundation of subsequent projects and commercialization efforts.Project 2 – Adding Energy Harvesting Based Recharging Capability The second SEMI FlexTech-funded project proposed a novel self-recharging battery with the addition of Lucintech’s cadmium telluride (CdTe) photovoltaics (PV), which was also deposited on thin yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) substrates. Because the CdTe supports a superstrate configuration, the SSLB can function as the back sheet for the PV package, thereby dramatically decreasing overall package thickness. The resulting flexible integrated power pack provided up to 0.25 Wh of energy storage and ~0.2 W of PV generating capacity in a total package less than 250 microns.As part of that effort, the ITN Team identified an effective power-management circuit that was ultimately compatible with die thinning and form factors very attractive to FHE. Consequently, the PV and SSLB were interconnected into a common power bus that enabled FHE to be operated with either the PV, SSLB or some combination of the two.ITN is seeing great interest in this product and both developing a version with substantially higher capacities than the project entertained for a UAV platform while ramping to low volume with support from NextFlex, a member of the Manufacturing USA network, and formed in 2015 through a cooperative agreement between the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and FlexTech Alliance.Monolithic integration of function layers atop of SSLB for high performance microelectronics device Project 3 – Integration with Processing and Sensor SystemsThe third FlexTech-funded project builds further on that foundation. In this project, the ITN Team is maturing the technologies to create a battery with an integrated processing and sensor system, nicknamed BiPASS. In addition to SSLB layers, the BiPASS package integrates printed circuits on YSZ employing high-performance, silicon- based bare die micro-electronics and/or thin film sensors into the common packaging. Mock-up of the charge control circuit on SSLB The initial demonstration integrates a commercial lithium battery charge control circuit within the SSLB packaging to create a monolithically integrated power module. There have also been promising developments of the University of Rhode Island’s metal oxide (MOx)-based thin film gas sensors that have dramatically increased sensitivity when deposited on thin YSZ. The resultant sensor achieves ppb detection of trace explosives gases that can be powered by SSLB. Along the way, ITN’s partners Molex and SunRay Scientific matured several aspects of FHE circuit printing and integration on both PET and YSZ, including new materials and processes for conductive traces, and bare die attachment with fine features. The project is in its final stages and the ITN Team now has a promising roadmap to integrate power, microelectronics, and thin film sensors/sensor systems into a single paper-thin package.Commercial Scale-Up StrategySince the initial demonstrations were completed, ITN has been actively maturing a commercial scale-up strategy based on significant market-pull and interest from several companies. A new venture to commercialize this next generation SSLB is in process. As part of those discussions, ITN is in active discussions with potential strategic partners to support the transition to high-volume production to access additional markets, many of which are cost-sensitive and need a higher degree of production maturity.In the meantime, ITN’s limited volume SSLB production line is already supporting medical device customers. In addition, a baseline SSLB (~2.5 mAh capacity) has been developed and tested in several new applications, including wearables, sensors and smart labels.“Based on the acceptance of these project in the market, I believe all three projects have provided significant value to the SEMI FlexTech community,” noted Brian Berland, Chief Technology Officer at ITN. “In addition, the connections and visibility we have gained within the industry by partnering with SEMI FlexTech have been invaluable. We are excited to continue this journey with new and additional projects. In the meantime, we are hopeful that our ongoing discussions with investment partners will support our commercializing of these components.”For more information visit www.flextech.org. SEMI FlexTech is currently (from 6/10/2020 – 7/17/2020) accepting white papers for new technology development projects. Read more at www.flextech.org.About the AuthorDr. Gity Samadi is the SEMI FlexTech Program Manager. Gity is responsible for the flexible hybrid electronics R D consortium activities including project awards and management, Technical Advisory Council management, and webinar/industry event planning for the building and fostering of this dynamic innovative community.