According to the Wall Street journal reported, silicon valley is preparing to reshape the foundations of the semiconductor industry - circuit board. A kind of flexible thin transparent circuit board is expected to create more jobs in the semiconductor industry.
Manufacturing this kind of Circuit boards Jabil Circuit Inc and Flextronics International companies such as envisaged the ultrathin Circuit board in the future can be clingy skin analysis the condition of soldiers and pilots, around the natural gas pipeline as detector or offer is capable of detecting the elastic should force sensor nodes of airplane wings. This new semiconductor industry consortium is led by the us department of defense and the U.S. department of energy to get rid of the traditional circuit board materials and production technology.
In some cases, the semiconductor circuit can be printed onto paper, plastic, or other organic materials, similar to the inkjet printing process. To use the concept of printing technology to the electronic products already has more than ten years. But in the past in the field of the efforts have failed, largely because of the cheaper technology trying to replace silicon chips and use more widely.
But now, in addition to drive technology innovation, related companies and U.S. government officials hope the new technology to semiconductor manufacturing of reflow, the United States. Most of the mass production of chips and other electronic devices have been moving from silicon valley to lower-cost regions such as China. But like Jabil Circuit Inc and Flextronics International Ltd company manufacturing has been to stay in the United States, to help customers to design and build a prototype product. Flexible printed circuit manufacturing provide more opportunities for semiconductor manufacturing. Some executives hope that the us company to develop proprietary technology makes it more difficult to let foreign factory flexible circuits to copy the same products.
The technology can be widely used in automobile windshield, antenna, solar cells and rfid tags need embedded micro small areas of the circuit. IDTechEx, forecast the market size of flexible electronics will increase from $8.6 billion this year to $2020 in 26.2 billion. For a long time, the semiconductor companies in the United States are committed to the production technology of thinner wafers. And chip produced by flexible circuits can be rolled up like a piece of paper. Interest is part of the U.S. military electronic equipment from lower soldiers must carry weight, has been tracking the health of the soldiers. Flexible skin monitoring sensors can detect fatigue status of soldiers on the battlefield. One of the flexible circuits development company NextFlex funds have $7.5 billion from the department of defense, and several of the Obama administration to set up to encourage cooperation manufacturing technology institute.
