The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of next-generation power delivery products for the wearable, Internet of Things (IoT), and portable electronics markets. The proposed manufacturing path may generate opportunities at all levels of the electronics supply chain as the technology is agnostic to the power delivery mode, extensibility to other system components, heterogeneous component integration, and compatibility with emerging chiplet packaging. Both supply chain (analog chip, passive component, and multiferroic component manufacturers) and end-users may benefit from the proposed technology by creating optimal building blocks with agile designs. The proposed technology may provide low-cost components with the required power densities, size, thickness and system interfaces that may be purchased by various end-users in healthcare, safety, and security.
This I-Corps project is based on the development of power delivery subsystems with embedded power telemetry units, rectification, and storage in a single thin flex package. Such packages are proposed to be manufactured using low-cost, flex-embedding technologies. The proposed technology may transform biomedical electronic systems from their current 2D assembled architectures with pre-packaged devices to thin embedded modules. The underlying technology is based on a power telemetry approach with multiferroics to provide much higher power densities through external magnetic fields and embedded packaging of multiferroic power telemetry with capacitive storage and thin diodes. The power modules may be customized to different functions based on the required performance, physiological, and design constraints. Since future components are expected to be thinned and diced to chiplets of less than 100 micron thickness, this approach transforms wafers to systems with the least disruption to the supply chain where device manufacturers can directly adapt their devices to subsystems. This low-cost manufacturing path may enable high-volume production of power modules, bringing the best combination of multiferroic telemetry with rectification and storage. In addition, the modularity will allow easy extensibility to incorporate building-block component technologies.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
