Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/597087
20 The PCB Magazine • November 2015 Hybrid Electronics Manufacturing Innovation Institute in San Jose California, a project for IPC's Government Relations Committee, was announced in September and will receive $75 million in funding from the U.S. DoD and will be overseen by the Flex Tech Alliance, as a con- sortium of 96 companies, 11 laboratories and non-profits, 42 universities, and 14 state and re- gional organizations. The FHEMII will develop next generation materials and manufacturing methods for flexible electronics. Innovation in novel materials such as gra- phene and PEDOT will create new devices that are not possible today. Materials science heavy- weights such as DuPont are already working on materials to make next generation high-speed flexible circuits, high-temperature circuits' mate- rials and even copper-based inks to print anten- nas for these next generation designs (Figure 7). Then there is the Internet backbone that will drive a significant share of the investment. OEMs like Cisco, Juniper, Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Bro- cade and HP will pave the way for more telecom infrastructure with ultra-high-speed backplane and daughter card systems. Cisco maintains a team of industry experts to test and characterize materials and manufacturing methods to achieve these next generation speeds. Team members like Scott Hinaga work diligently to devise new test methods and construction strategies to char - acterize materials that will allow copper circuits to push the physics envelope and maintain digi- tal reliability up to 56 Gb/s per channel. The fabricators who will see growth in this segment will include companies like TTM, San- mina, WUS, Gold Circuits, ISU Petasys and Am- phenol. Those who will truly stand out, will Figure 7: rF antennae printed with DuPont's copper ink. Figure 8: open compute server in a Facebook data center. puTTing iT All TogeTher WHAT IS THe InTerneT oF THInGS AnD WHy SHoULD IT MATTer To US?