The Kynix Blog

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed a method for the manufacture of thin film transistors using a roll-to-roll technique only. Thin film transistors can now be manufactured using roll-to-roll techniques, such as printing, for the deposition of patterns on the substrate layer of film. This is set to expand the range of electronic components and products, while slashing their production costs. Thin film transistors are more suitable than traditional silicon chip transistors for applications such as large-surface display screens, certain sensor applications, toys, games and smart cards.A transistor is a basic electronic component which can function as an electrical switch, an amplifier or a memory element. For transistor technology, roll-to-roll fabrication techniques have a range of advantages. These include the possibility to use large surface areas, as well as mechanical flexibility, transparency and low production start-up costs. Until now, production of thin film transistors has typically been only partly based on roll-to-roll techniques, resulting in fairly high mass production costs.As the technology matures, it is predicted that the markets for thin film transistors will grow from their current value of three million dollars to around 180 million over the next decade.VTT has developed thin film transistor production techniques as part of the EU POLARIC research project. With the aid of a special self-aligning technique, the method under development eliminates the challenge of aligning the patterns in the different thin film layers accurately against each other in the roll-to-roll process. In addition, the pattern size for transistor components is pushed to the limit of minuteness possible for printing techniques; this means patterns of a few dozen micrometres at their tiniest..Producing thin film transistors using a self-aligning roll-to-roll manufacturing process is one of the few demonstrations internationally so far. Initial experiences of this thin film transistor manufacturing process are promising. It provides VTT with the ideal basis for using the process to test thin film materials as they develop, to develop more complex electronic circuits and to trial various applications. The goal is to keep developing the technology until it matures enough to provide a springboard for new business activities. VTT is now seeking companies interested in developing applications based on printed thin film transistors. 

Texas Instruments today announced the industry's first flexible high frequency 13.56 MHz sensor transponder family. The highly integrated ultra-low-power RF430FRL153HCRGER system-on-chip (SoC) family combines an ISO 15693-compliant Near Field Communication (NFC) interface with a programmable microcontroller (MCU), non-volatile FRAM, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and SPI or I2C interface. The dual-interface RF430FRL153HCRGER NFC sensor transponder is optimized for use in fully passive (battery-less) or semi-active modes to achieve extended battery life in a wide range of consumer wearables, industrial, medical and asset tracking applications.Non-volatile FRAM combines the speed, flexibility and endurance of SRAM with the stability and reliability of flash – while providing the industry's lowest power consumption and virtually unlimited write cycles. FRAM allows developers to create products that can quickly store sensor data and enables easy configuration of the transponder and sensors to meet any application's needs.Integrating NFC sensors into medical, industrial and asset-tracking applicationsDevelopers can now design products that require an analog or digital interface, data-logging capabilities and data transfers to an NFC-enabled reader. The RF430FRL153HCRGER transponder acts as a sensor node for these applications and generates an IoT-ready solution when an NFC-enabled device pushes the data to the cloud.In medical or health and fitness applications, the RF430FRL153HCRGER can be used in disposable patches that sense temperature, hydration and more. This allows patients to monitor and share vital data securely with their health providers. The device monitors and logs data in local storage (FRAM) before transferring it to an NFC-enabled tablet or smartphone.The RF430FRL153HCRGERenables the design of maintenance-free and hermetically sealed galvanic isolated sensor systems in the industrial markets. These sensors are powered out of the RF field and communicate wirelessly through NFC to collect and log data.Logistics applications such as food tracking need constant temperature control, which can be monitored and logged with the RF430FRL153HCRGER transponder. It allows the design of highly integrated, size-optimized and easy-to-use data loggers with several sensors that connect to NFC-enabled devices and readers throughout the distribution channel.Features and benefits of TI's RF430FRL153HCRGER NFC sensor transpondersSupports wireless communication via the ISO/IEC 15693, ISO/IEC 18000-3 compliant RFID interface.Optimized for 1.5 V single-cell-battery-powered designs or battery-less designs that harvest energy from the RF field generated from an NFC reader at the same reading distance. Intelligent power management includes a battery switch to ensure long battery life.14-bit sigma-delta ADC with ultra-low input current, low noise and ultra-low offset enables developers to connect up to three additional external sensors in addition to the integrated temperature sensor.SPI or I2C interface can support digital sensors or connect the device to a host system.Application code embedded in ROM manages RF communication and sensor readings to provide the ultimate flexibility in configuring the device. Developers can configure sampling rates, measurement thresholds and alarms.Universal non-volatile memory (FRAM) allows data storage as well as extension and adjustment of application code.Integrates a 16-bit ultra-low-power programmable MSP430 CPU core that is supported by a robust ecosystem of development tools.Fully integrated into TI's Code Composer Studio (CCS) and IAR's Embedded Workbench® integrated development environments (IDEs). 

 Samsung's recall of 2.5 million Galaxy Note 7 phones after several dozen caught fire and exploded may stem from a subtle manufacturing error, but it highlights the challenge electronics makers face in packing ever more battery power into ever thinner phones, while rushing for faster release dates.Announcing the recall on Sept. 2, Samsung confirmed dozens of cases where Note 7 batteries caught fire or exploded, mostly while charging. It plans a software update that will cap battery recharging at 60 percent capacity to help minimize risks of overheating. But it is urging owners to keep the phones turned off until they can get them replaced, beginning Monday.U.S. safety regulators stepped in Thursday with an official recall, saying Samsung's voluntary efforts were inadequate. Though Samsung promised replacement devices, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said U.S. customers would be eligible for refunds if they choose. Replacements are expected in stores by next Wednesday.The Note 7 debuted to rave reviews in August thanks to its speed, new software features and—not least—the estimated nine hours it would run between charges. But all that power comes at a price: Users began reporting the phones were catching fire or exploding, in one case incinerating the SUV it had been left in.Aviation authorities in the U.S., Australia and Europe have urged passengers not to use or charge Note 7s while flying and not to put them in checked baggage. On Monday, Canada issued an official recall.Koh Dong-jin, Samsung's mobile president, said in announcing the recall on Sept. 2 that an investigation turned up a "tiny error" in the manufacturing process for the faulty batteries in the Note 7s that was very difficult to identify. The end of the pouch-shaped battery cell had some flaws that increased the chance of stress or overheating, he explained.That kind of manufacturing error is unimaginable for top-notch battery makers with adequate quality controls, said Park Chul Wan, a former director of the next generation battery research center at the state-owned Korea Electronics Technology Institute.Samsung and other experts should search for factors outside the battery cells that could have led to overheating, he said."If Koh's argument is right, that makes Samsung SDI a third-rate company," Park said. "But it does not appear to be a simple battery problem."Time also is a factor in marketing and making the phones.In 2015, Samsung moved up its unveiling of its new Galaxy Note model to August from September, seeking a leg up on Apple's September iPhone upgrades.Before the issue of battery explosions emerged, supplies were not keeping pace with demand for the Note 7.Samsung has not recalled Note 7s sold in China, but the company has refused to say which of its two battery suppliers made the faulty batteries or clarify whose batteries are used in which Note 7 smartphones. The company also refused comment on South Korean media reports that it has stopped using batteries from Samsung SDI, one of its two suppliers, in the Note 7.C.W. Chung, an analyst at Nomura Securities in Seoul, cited SDI officials in estimating that about 70 percent of the batteries for the Galaxy Note 7 smartphones came from SDI.The other 30 percent are thought to have been supplied by Amperex Technology Ltd., a Chinese-based manufacturer that reportedly also is a main supplier of batteries for the iPhone.Problems with lithium batteries have afflicted everything from laptops to Tesla cars to Boeing's 787 jetliner, though having so many lithium-ion battery fires in a short time is unheard of, Park said.The batteries are ubiquitous in consumer electronic devices, favored by manufacturers because they are lightweight and pack much more energy into a small space than other power cells.But storing so much energy in a tiny space, with combustible components separated by ultra-thin walls, makes them susceptible to overheating if exposed to high temperatures, damage or flaws in manufacturing. If the separators fail, a chemical reaction can quickly escalate out of control.That's what happened with the Note 7, Samsung's Koh explained."The flaw in the manufacturing process resulted in the negative electrodes and the positive electrodes coming together," he told reporters in Seoul.It is unclear how Samsung failed to discover the battery problem before launching the Note 7. It confirmed delays in shipments for extra quality tests weeks later, in late August, after photos of charred phones began popping up on social media.South Korean experts suggested Samsung may have been so ambitious with the Note 7's design that it compromised safety."There was no choice but to make the separator (between positive and negative anodes) thin because of the battery capacity," said Lee Sang-yong, a professor at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology who worked more than a decade at LG Chem, a leading lithium battery maker. Thicker separators can improve safety but will not necessarily prevent all overheating issues, he said.Doh Chil-Hoon, head of the state-run Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute's battery research division, said that based on the limited information provided by Samsung, he believes the push to increase battery power was part of the problem."Even with a small manufacturing mistake, if there had been enough elements to ensure safety, it would not explode," Doh said. "It is a roundabout way of admitting weak safety."The Note 7 phones have a powerful 3,500 milliampere hour battery, whereas the Galaxy S7 smartphone, which has a slightly smaller body than the Note 7, features a 3,000 mAh battery. So does the Note 5, launched in 2015.Apple does not provide information on the iPhone's battery capacity in milliampere hours. But two research firms that specialize in analyzing tech gadgets and their components said the battery in the iPhone 6S Plus is 2,750mAh. The size of the battery in the newly released iPhone 7 is not yet known.The 3,500 mAh battery in the Samsung Note 7 is "one of the highest, if not the highest, capacity battery we've seen in a phone," said Wayne Lam, an industry analyst at IHS Markit Technology.Lam said he thinks the Note 7 battery problem resulted from weak controls in manufacturing, not a poor or unsafe design.A spokeswoman at iFixit, which publishes repair guides for electronic gadgets, offered a similar view. "We don't think any internal design changes in the Note 7 are responsible for the exploding batteries—more likely just a manufacturing defect," IFixit's Kay-Kay Clapp said in an email.Apple has tweaked hardware and software it developed itself to make iPhones use power more efficiently, while Samsung has increased the capacity of the batteries in its phones.That can be done without increasing size by adjusting components or changing the production process, Lam said."You have two different trajectories, with Samsung packing in more energy density, versus Apple trying to trim it down by optimizing everything else," he said, adding that the two rivals are "constantly locked in this arms race of improving and one-upping."While Apple and Samsung are using built-in batteries for their premium phones, LG Electronics, Samsung's smaller South Korean rival, has opted for a replaceable, 3,200 mAh capacity battery for its new premium, jumbo screen smartphone, the V20.LG chose to make the phone thinner and allow customers to extend battery life by swapping out batteries."The security of the battery isn't directly related to whether the battery is replaceable or not," Cho Joon-ho, head of LG's mobile business, told reporters. "But we make efforts to secure safety with quality controlling tests beforehand."  

Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has developed the world's first 15-nanometer (nm) process technology, which will apply to 2-bit-per-cell 128-gigabit (16 gigabytes) NAND flash memories. Mass production with the new technology will start at the end of April at Fab 5 Yokkaichi Operations, Toshiba's NAND flash fabrication facility (fab), replacing second generation 19 nm process technology, Toshiba's previous flagship process. The second stage of Fab 5 is currently under construction, and the new technology will also be deployed there.Toshiba has achieved the world's smallest class chip size with the 15nm process plus improved peripheral circuitry technology. The new chips achieve the same write speed as chips formed with second generation 19 nm process technology, but boost the data transfer rate to 533 megabits a second, 1.3 times faster, by employing a high speed interface.Toshiba is now applying the 15nm process technology 3-bit-per-cell chips, and aims to start mass production in the first quarter of this fiscal year, to June 2014. The company will develop controllers for embedded NAND flash memory in parallel and introduce 3-bit-per-cell products for smartphones and tablets, and will subsequently extend application to notebook PCs by developing a controller compliant with solid state drives (SSD). 

Researchers from the University of Twente MESA+ research institute, together with the company SolMateS, have developed a new type of transistor to reduce the power consumption of microchips. The basic element of modern electronics, namely the transistor, suffers from significant current leakage. By enveloping a transistor with a shell of piezoelectric material, which distorts when voltage is applied, researchers were able to reduce this leakage by a factor of five (compared to a transistor without this material). An article presenting the prototype of the transistor appears in the June issue of IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, an authoritative scientific journal in the field of transistor research.Current leakage in transistors is one of the causes of battery depletion in portable electronic devices, such as smartphones and laptops. With the new type of transistor, either the current leakage (while the transistor is not active) or the energy consumption (while the transistor is active) can be addressed. In the latter case, it is estimated that energy consumption can be reduced by approximately 10%.Intelligent squeezingThe trick lies in a piezoelectric material which is applied to the exterior of the transistor. The piezoelectric material expands when you apply a voltage to it and compresses the silicon in the transistor with a pressure of about 10,000 atmospheres. This high pressure ensures that electrons flow through the transistor faster. You can therefore make microchips more efficient by 'intelligently squeezing the transistor'.Incidentally, existing transistors are already put under high pressure in order to improve their efficiency. In this case, however, the pressure is permanently built in, which actually increases the current leakage. In the prototype designed by the UT, the transistor is only put under pressure when required and this makes a big difference. The electric current needed to switch the transistor from on to off is thereby partly replaced by mechanical tension.CrudeAccording to dr. ir. Ray Hueting from the chair Semiconductor Components, this is an initial prototype that can already produce energy savings. "The design is still fairly crude where the material is concerned. With the further development of the transistor, it should therefore be possible to achieve a further significant increase in efficiency."The operating principle of this transistor was theoretically predicted in 2013 by the same research group. But in advance it was by no means certain that the transistor would be a success. The reason for this is that piezoelectric materials and silicon (which transistors are made of) are difficult to combine. The researchers solved this by inserting a buffer layer between the two materials.    

Fujitsu Semiconductor Europe today announced a new arrival to its FerVID family of chips for RFID tags. As with all members of the FerVID family, the MB89R112 series uses ferroelectric memory (FRAM) for fast write speeds, high-frequency rewritability, radiation tolerance and low-power operation. With industry-leading 9 KB memory, the series offers tailored solutions for factory automation and medical equipment as well as for embedded and industrial applications.  Since 2004, Fujitsu has developed FRAM products as part of the FerVID family with two frequency bands, for use as chips in high-functionality RFID tags operating in the HF band (13.56 MHz) and UHF band (860 to 960 MHz). Today, its products serve a wide range of applications, including chips for data-carrier tags in the factory automation and maintenance sectors, chips capable of withstanding gamma radiation or electron beams for the medical and pharmaceutical sectors, and chips with serial interfaces for embedded applications.The new MB89R112 series includes 9 KB of FRAM, the greatest density available in an RFID chip operating in the HF band as defined in ISO/IEC 15693. Of this 9 KB, 8 KB is provided as user memory, enabling access by read/write operations to the entire 8 KB region as defined in ISO/IEC 15693. The series will be offered in two variants, with 24pF and 96pF input capacitance. Writing 8 KB of data takes approximately four seconds, a high-speed operation that is six times faster than speeds achieved by E2PROM products. The greater data volume available on RFID tags enables greater efficiency for applications such as product lifecycle traceability management – from manufacturing to logistics, use and disposal – or on-site data logging for equipment maintenance records.The market is demanding higher-capacity memory, plus RFID connectivity to sensors and microcontrollers, so as to facilitate the wireless modification of product operating parameters or the logging of environmental factors during distribution. These features would benefit production control in automotive and electronics manufacturing, as well as maintenance applications in aviation, road-building, construction and civil engineering.The MB89R112QN products enable these features by supplementing the HF RFID interface with an additional SPI serial interface for microcontroller connectivity. Since the 8 KB of user memory in FRAM can be accessed from the microcontroller via SPI, shared memory regions can be used both for data logging and as a parametric area for changing the microcontroller's operating parameters.Application examples include logging environmental readings for logistics, detecting equipment errors, modifying electronic displays, altering sensor threshold values, changing firmware settings, plus many other novel and innovative applications that were previously unworkable.