TSMC

CEA-LETI

CEA-LETI is the main department of the French research center CEA. Based primarily in Grenoble, it covers many aspects of semiconductor manufacturing, and has recently extended its scope to cover hybrid electronics. IDTechEx visited CEA-LETI on 1 December 2021

The Most Significant Advanced Materials News from 2021

With the pandemic still raging, supply chain disruptions, the chip shortage, climate catastrophes, and geopolitical turbulence, it is safe to say 2021 has not been smooth sailing. The materials and chemical sector provides the backbone of every industry and remains under pressure from all these challenges. In this article, IDTechEx highlights the key news from their independent perspective on this crucial industry.

Canatu

Canatu is a Finnish carbon nanomaterial developer, delivering engineered solutions based on carbon nanotubes and its proprietary carbon nanobud (carbon nanotube and fullerene hybrid) material. The company's focus is in the automotive and semiconductor industries. It is able to manufacture freestanding carbon nanotube films at thicknesses in the tens on nanometres.

EV Power Electronics: Driving Semiconductor Demand in a Chip Shortage

Semiconductors are the lifeblood of the modern age. From your watch to a washing machine, everything these days seems to be 'smart', 'connected' and therefore enabled by semiconductors. Unsurprisingly then, a massive shortage of chips present 'across all categories', according to some industry executives, is having a profound impact.

Tiny, Wireless, Injectable Chips Use Ultrasound to Monitor the Body

Columbia have developed the smallest single-chip system that is a complete functioning electronic circuit; implantable chips visible only in a microscope point the way to developing chips that can be injected into the body with a hypodermic needle to monitor medical conditions.

Insight LiDAR

Insight LiDAR is a spinout of Insight Photonic Solutions (USA), developing lidar modules.

3 Key Growth Drivers for the Aerogel Market

The aerogel market is forecast to exceed $700m within the next decade. This may appear modest for a unique material family that has been known for nearly a century, but after long periods of stagnation and several market failings this would represent a significant growth from the market status in 2020. This article will look at what will be driving this growth.

CVD Graphene for Electronic Applications: 2021 Status and Outlook

Given the exciting properties, graphene has always been linked as a revolutionary material for the electronics industry. CVD graphene is cited as the ideal solution in providing a perfect single layer produced in a low cost continuous R2R process, but the manufacturing and commercial reality have proved very different. After a long period of research, and with players regularly exiting and entering the field, we are only now starting to see this technology mature and the dawn of the commercial reality.

Apple Inc. (Micro-LED display)

The initial interests in µLED displays from the industry were largely generated by Apple. LuxVue is one of the companies with most complete µLED patents and the company was acquired by Apple in 2014.

mmWave electronics: towards AiP (antenna-in-package) technologies

Electronic packaging will play an important role in enabling higher frequency - e.g., mmWave - electronics. In particular, as the frequency goes up, the antenna spacing shrinks, the need to have large antenna arrays for gain as well as beam forming purposes increases; and the imperative to cut down transmission loss including by placing components closer together inside a package dramatically grows

GaN Systems

GaN Systems are leading suppliers of GaN on Si for power conversion applications. As the 5G market grows, this presents a potential new market for GaN Systems to demonstrate their GaN devices and wireless power transfer technology.

PragmatIC

PragmatIC manufacture flexible integrated circuits (termed FlexICs) which are targeted first at RFID tags and also other applications that require constrained complexity. Their main selling point is their low cost (< $0.01, depending on complexity and volume), making them an attractive alternative to silicon. PragmatIC have also developed a revolutionary approach to fabrication that, when compared to conventional silicon ICs, requires much less capital expenditure and a design-to-production cycle-time of less than one week.

Helios Bioelectronics

IDTechEx analyst Nadia Tsao spoke with a Helios Bioelectronics representative.

Ingestible bacteria on a chip could help diagnose disease

Researchers have built an ingestible sensor equipped with genetically engineered bacteria that can diagnose bleeding in the stomach or other gastrointestinal problems. This "bacteria-on-a-chip" approach combines sensors made from living cells with ultra-low-power electronics that convert the bacterial response into a wireless signal that can be read by a smartphone.

Low-power chip could make speech recognition ubiquitous

Whereas a cellphone running speech-recognition software might require about 1 watt of power, the new chip requires between 0.2 and 10 milliwatts, depending on the number of words it has to recognize.

Ostendo Technologies

This profile is focused on Ostendo's Quantum Photonic Imager (QPI) technology, its proprietary LED microdisplay, currently under development. Although still largely in stealth mode about its technology, some information has been made available about the company's QPI to IDTechEx analysts and in some display symposiums.

Time-based electrocardiogram readout chip for wearable applicatication

The chip maintains consistent beat detection capabilities, even under movement paving the way to a low cost, low power multi-sensor Systems-on-Chip solution for wearable medical applications.