At a glance
| Booth | I3000 |
| Country | GB |
| Website | www.pragmaticsemi.com |
Company profile
Pragmatic Semiconductor Ltd is pioneering flexible semiconductor technology at scale and designs and manufactures flexible integrated circuits, or FlexICs, as ultra-thin semiconductors with a physically flexible form factor. The company describes FlexICs as ultra-thin, physically flexible chips with a low carbon footprint. Its products, FlexIC platforms, and foundry services provide connect, sense, and compute capabilities intended to support sustainable edge and item-level intelligence at scale and speed. Pragmatic links FlexIC connect, sense, and compute capabilities to AI-driven IoT and to sustainable digital transformation. FlexICs are manufactured on 300mm wafers and are positioned for situations where sustainability and a flexible form factor are important. The company's use cases span consumer, industrial, healthcare, and other markets, including smart packaging and item-level traceability for food and beverages, apparel, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. Consumer-electronics examples include AR glasses, health wearables, and toys and games, while sensor solutions are used for scalable data collection in IoT and industrial applications. Pragmatic FlexIC Foundry is described as using a process that supports sustainable production, rapid innovation cycle times, and a pathway toward supply-chain resilience. The company's FlexIC Platform Gen 3 extends this flexible-semiconductor approach to rapid design and manufacture of mixed-signal ASICs.
Exhibits
FlexICs use indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) thin-film transistor technology on a flexible substrate, allowing intelligence to be integrated where conventional rigid semiconductors are less suitable, from system miniaturization to item-level intelligence. They are built with standard high-volume 300mm semiconductor processing, and Pragmatic states that fabrication uses less water and energy and fewer harmful chemicals than conventional silicon processing, reducing carbon footprint. The FlexIC technology page characterizes the chips as ultra-thin, physically flexible, sustainable, suitable for production cycles of just days, capable of edge and item-level intelligence, and appropriate for integration into mass-market items. Compared with rigid monocrystalline silicon wafers, FlexICs use IGZO TFT technology on an ultra-thin polyimide substrate. Pragmatic states that silicon fabrication can involve hundreds of steps, many above 1000°C, whereas FlexIC production uses around 30 steps, mostly at room temperature, with no process above 300°C. The company attributes lower energy use, lower water use, and reduced use of harmful gases to the shorter and lower-temperature FlexIC production process. FlexICs are optimized for functional density and cost efficiency to provide 'just enough' intelligence to everyday objects rather than competing with silicon for raw processing power. NFC Connect uses FlexIC technology to provide low-cost, low-carbon intelligence at the edge and item level, while custom FlexIC designs use industry-standard ASIC design flows. The foundry customization path uses industry-standard tools and a process design kit for custom ASIC work, with turnaround described in weeks rather than months. Pragmatic also states that FlexIC manufacturing uses reusable carriers in modular, localized fabs and that the ultra-thin form uses substantially less material than traditional integrated circuits. FlexIC Platform Gen 3 delivers rapid design and manufacture of mixed-signal ASICs using metal-oxide thin-film transistor technology for connect, sense, and compute functions such as RFID, multiplexing, driver and sensor readout circuitry, and basic computation. Platform Gen 3 supports standard electronic-design-automation tool compatibility, a standard-cell library, rapid fabrication on 300mm wafers, and sustainable low-carbon manufacturing. Pragmatic states that Platform Gen 3 provides a 10x digital power improvement and a 3x digital area improvement over the previous generation. The platform uses a 600 nm minimum-channel-dimension n-type FET, a dedicated 200 kΩ/sq resistor layer, and 4.5 fF/μm2 metal-insulator-metal capacitors. Four metal layers provide routing and interconnects with a 4 μm routing pitch and 1 μm line width and spacing. The technology is packaged with passivation for protection and isolation and with a redistribution layer using aluminium metallization for compatible attachment methods. Its process design kit includes a primitive-device library with simulation models, parameterized cells, DRC and LVS verification checks, technology data and files, and design, layout, and tape-out manuals and guides. The PDK is stated to be compatible with Cadence and Siemens industry-standard EDA tools. Pragmatic states that FlexICs are around 37 microns thick including wafer-level packaging and have a minimum bend radius of 5mm. The manufacturing approach uses conventional semiconductor-processing equipment and techniques such as photolithography on 300mm wafer carriers, while substrate preparation differs from silicon processing and the number of process steps is significantly lower. Applications listed for Platform Gen 3 include consumer electronics, supply chain, security, and factory automation, extending the FlexIC concept from packaging and NFC to mixed-signal ASIC functions in flexible form factors.
Capabilities and products
- FlexIC ultra-thin flexible integrated circuits
- indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) thin-film transistor (TFT) technology
- FlexIC foundry services
- rapid design and manufacture of mixed-signal flexible ASICs
- NFC Connect flexible NFC chip
- radio-frequency identification (RFID), multiplexing, driver and sensor readout
- rapid FlexIC manufacturing on 300mm wafers