Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Chips with a thickness of below 60 microns could enable manufacturers to design garment with integrated electronic circuits for applications such as health and comfort monitoring. The Belgian research center IMEC has presented a process to manufacture such ultra-thin chips.
The process has been developed by IMEC and an associated laboratory at the Ghent University and introduced at the Smart Systems Integration Conference in Brussels. The process uses a chip package that allows integrating electronic systems in a low-cost flex substrate, the research institute said.
Before the chip is tested and embedded into the package, it is thinned down to 25 microns. The chip package itself is embedded in a double-layer flexible printed circuit board. The institute points out that the process of embedding the chip into the PCB as well as the PCB itself are based on conventional, cost-effective technologies.
At the conference, IMEC researchers showed a wireless heart rate and muscle activity monitor based on the ultra-thin chip package (UTCP). The prototype system contained a microcontroller with ADC, an ultra-low power biopotential amplifier and an RF transceiver, all integrated in the UTCP. The integration of these systems into apparels is facilitated by the fact that ultra-thin chips become mechanically flexible which makes it unobtrusive and comfortable to wear.
By: DocMemory
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