“Leveraging Technology for Business Transformation”

An electronic technology that is intrinsically mechanically flexible, eventually fully stretchable, requires a new set of materials satisfying both electronic performance and completely new mechanical properties. Here, Antonio Facchetti, Founder & Chief Technology Officer of Flexterra Corporation, has contributed to revolutionizing the realization of unconventional electronically active and passive materials for the fabrication of electronic circuits driving electronic devices. The essence of the discovery is related to Chemistry and Materials Science, where the molecular design of certain (macro)molecules translates into material properties. Facchetti invented several of the chemistries and (macro)molecules enabling the materials to function as requested, and through his innovations, he and his team plan to take Flexterra to new heights.

Flexterra is leveraging technology to achieve significant business transformation outcomes, operational efficiency, revenue, and market share growth. “We are working on two fronts, firstly at the chemistry level with the invention of the new materials and create the supply chain for provide them to customers in the form of formulations,” he says. To achieve these goals, the company has created two sites. One in the US (Skokie, IL), lead by Xia Yu and Zhihua Chen, devoted to chemistry and materials development, and one in Taiwan (Hsinchu), lead by the CEO David Wang with the support of Shane Lin and Agatha Lai, targeting product scale-up and customer support. “Note, protocols to produce, formulate, and qualify the products we sell differ to those used in conventional electronic products. This is the core of our business and we are blessed that our major investor, SAES Getters, is a leader in functional and electronic materials. SAES teams are supporting us with formulation scaling and qualification protocols in addition to IP and market analysis.” Second, to support their customers directly for implementing products in their equipment to fabricate the electronic components. Thus, customer support is as relevant as materials discovery for fast introduction into production.

"Flexterra is leveraging technology to achieve significant business transformation outcomes, operational efficiency, revenue, and market share growth."

As per Facchetti, electronic products are fast-changing, and customers need a new solution to create new products or make some existing products more affordable. “So, our technology based on intrinsically soft electronic materials for thin-film transistors (TFTs, transistors are electronic building blocks of circuits) can deliver solutions to these issues,” he explains. “Also, it would be desirable that some electronic products being fabricated directly on the idem of interest, and not transfer to it. The best way to do so is by printing the circuits, and it is here where our technology and materials will play a key role – which is truly revolutionary.”

For the company, digital fabric technology has always been a way to convey what their technology offers in terms of materials. Flexterra’s business model is not to produce circuits, display, sensors but provide materials to electronic companies that would produce them. Internally they spent a lot of time, in the past, to generate demonstrators as technology validation. However, they are working directly with customers inside their production facilities to validate Flexterra products. “For instance, we recently disclosed the production of circuits for backplane display in a FAB facility currently also producing conventional silicon backplane circuits,” says Facchetti. “This demonstrates that thin-film transistors based exclusively on our materials can deliver the same performance of amorphous a-Silicon transistors using the same equipment used for the production of silicon TFTs. The added value is the far greater mechanical flexibility and impact resistance of our organic TFT circuits.”

The company's revolutionary breakthrough at the intersection of science, engineering, and technology, all with one aim: to enable the production of flexible electronics at scale. Three factors make the technology revolutionary.

• First, the materials are intrinsically more mechanically flexible than conventional electronic inorganic materials.

• Second, they are solution-processable; thus, they can be formulated into inks deposited by either conventional FAB equipment or printing methods.

• Third, the materials are functional also when processed at low temperature; thus, these circuits can be produced on inexpensive plastic substrates

Flexterra’s products, also called ActivinkTM, require the implementation of chemical science/engineering, tribology, materials science, and applied physics. They target technologies in the (flexible, unbreakable, large size) display area, (photo/radiation) detection, and (chemical, physical) sensors. “We will not make the devices but our goal is for our materials to enable these technologies. There are several products that our customers are targeting and we are supporting them directly,” says the steadfast leader. IE