Electronics

Microelectronics extends… who knows where

I attended a two-day symposium at Arizona State University this past September, where technologists came together to discuss trends in microelectronic packaging. It was specifically geared toward medical electronics, but the presentations spanned a wide range of applications. Most people don’t know or care how their iPhone manages to pack so much functionality into such a small volume, nor how a thousand songs can emanate from a bauble that weighs less than their keychain, but each of these now commonplace items is made possible by two key trends: The continued pace of shrinking microelectronics (Moore’s Law) The ability to pack those tiny transistors into smaller and smaller volumes (More than Moore) A company (mc10) that is taking regular computer chips, making them so thin that the silicon material from which they’re made is as flexible as paper, and then mounting them on plastic so they become flexible and stretchable. MC10…