Embedded Microchips: Alternative For SMDs

You might not be opening electronic gadgets everyday unless you are a professional dealing in electronics; most of us have seen the green and incomprehensible electronic circuit boards in them. For young electronic graduates, the object is of daily usage. In the last decade or so, the embedded market has seen a sharp upward trend thanks to the research activities in this field by various Universities and research institutes. The embedded microchips are nowadays so much used that emerging economies are increasingly dealing in embedded systems.

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Image Credit: IMEC

Working to gain a greater insight in embedded technologies EU has started an initiative called Hiding Dies not only oriented towards research activities but also #-Link-Snipped-#. The initiative is funded under EU's sixth framework program also abbreviated as 6FP. The project undertaken in this initiative called #-Link-Snipped-# is expected to bear fruits in coming future.

The idea of HERMES is to replace the surface mounted device with Printed circuit board which offers space saving solutions as number of devices like transistors and capacitors can be printed on the circuit instead of mounting it physically. The method employed by them is called the Face-Down approach. In this the HERMES team placed a dielectric on a copper foil and integrated the components in an inverted position. This helped them to overcome the disadvantage faced by the SMDs. This is because the PCBs so formed can handle components of varying width from 0.5 micrometer to 1mm without any difficulty. The microchips become even more robust. This is evident from the fact that the chips survived 15000 drops when tested for robustness by AT&S team.

The advantages are not only limited to the strength and robustness. PCB's now boast of higher signal efficiency coupled with strength of signal as the transmitted data will be less distorted due to the shortest distance it has to encounter. The Electronic revolution that we are about to see is the same as optical mouse replacing ball mouse within no time. It will be a matter of time that we will rarely see surface mounted devices.