American Semiconductor demos FleX silicon-on-polymer flexible CMOS

Flexible Electronics & Displays Conference, BOISE, USA: American Semiconductor Inc. is presenting the industry’s first demonstration of a wafer scale process for high performance, flexible, single crystalline CMOS circuits at the Flexible Electronics & Displays Conference on Thursday, February 10, 2011.

The FleX Silicon-on-Polymer technology is demonstrated as applied to Flexfet 130nm ULP CMOS for flexible and conformal IC applications.

“FleX Silicon-on-Polymer is a significant leap forward for flexible electronics,” said Doug Hackler, president and CEO of American Semiconductor. “FleX delivers CMOS in a flexible form factor, enabling logic and memory for applications such as flexible e-books, phones and displays. This demonstration includes high performance CMOS with multiple layers of metal interconnect, which fills the critical gap of electronics for complex, flexible ICs needed to enable leading edge, flexible products to be realized.”

Flexible CMOS enables advancements in flexible electronics. For example, in current leading edge flexible displays only the actual display is flexible, while the enabling logic and memory remain off-board in traditionally packaged, rigid ICs. By utilizing FleX, designers can make the entire system flexible, opening up new concepts such as tablet computers, smart phones, flexible displays, wearable electronics, and 3D Integrated Circuits (3DIC).

FleX replaces the mechanical substrate of a traditional silicon wafer with a pliable polymer. “FleX is a unique process that can be applied to CMOS wafers from a wide variety of foundries,” said Rich Chaney, General Manager of American Semiconductor. “FleX is a wafer scale process that can be used to produce single die up to full 200mm flexible wafers. FleX manufacturing scales to provide cost-effective flexible CMOS.”

American Semiconductor, Inc. provides FleX technology as a standard process offering for both commercial and ITAR customer requirements.