The mass production of conventional silicon chips relies on a successful business model with large 'semiconductor fabrication plants' or 'foundries'. New research by shows that this 'foundry' model can also be applied to the field of flexible, thin-film electronics.
Silicon semiconductors have become the 'oil' of the computer age, which was also demonstrated recently by the chip shortage crisis. However, one of the disadvantages of conventional silicon chips is that they're not mechanically flexible. On the other hand you have the field of flexible electronics, which is driven by an alternative semiconductor technology: the thin-film transistor, or TFT.
Myny's group has now shown that such a business model is also viable in the field of thin-film electronics. They designed a specific TFT-based microprocessor and let it be produced in two foundries, after which they tested it in their lab, with success. The same chip was produced in two versions, based on two separate TFT technologies that are both mainstream. Their research paper is published inThe microprocessor Myny and his colleagues built is the iconic MOS 6502.
Although the performance of the 6502 microprocessor is not comparable with modern ones, this research demonstrates that also flexible chips can be designed and produced in a multi-project approach, analogue to the way this happens in the conventional chip industry. Myny concludes:"We will not compete with silicon-based chips, we want to stimulate and accelerate innovation based on flexible, thin-film electronics.