Chiplets – Printing the Circuitry of the Future!

What if, instead of buying a factory-built computer chip or integrated circuit board, you could just print one at your desk? Well if Xerox has its way, such a thing just might be possible in the not-so-distant future. The original inventor of the laser printer, Xerox is working on a new way to use the technology—on display at the company’s Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC—with miniscule, grain-of-sand-sized “chiplets” to alter the way circuitry is created.

The new process is called Xerographic microassembly, and it works like this: Traditional silicon wafers are separated into thousands of little chiplets and then bottled up as a physical “ink.” When the ink is ready, Xerox “prints” a device’s circuitry with the same technology used to print laser printer toner onto paper. The PARC technology then uses computing and an array of electrodes that generate microscopic electrical fields to control the precise placement of the tiny electronic circuits in both the correct position and the proper orientation. The chiplets can be everything from microprocessors to computer memory to analog devices known as microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS, that perform tasks like sensing heat, pressure, or motion.

A possibly overoptimistic view of this technology presents a future where Xerographic microassembly combined with 3D printing allows you to create smart objects with computing woven right into them from a desktop manufacturing plant as they are needed. Such technology could be used to create objects such as flexible smartphones that won’t break when sat on, a pressure-sensitive skin for robot hands, or medical bandages with smart-sensing capabilities that could capture health data during use and then be thrown away.

Perhaps a more cautious point of view would be one that says this new technology will probably not be replacing circuit board or chip factories, or creating new indestructible materials. Yet it could definitely have applications, and indeed implications, for the “Internet of Things,” in which distributed, embedded intelligence is placed upon all objects in the world, enabling all kinds of new capabilities for interactions in daily life.

There are definitely still some hurdles to overcome in the development of this chiplet process. One area, for example, that hasn’t been specifically addressed is how the chiplets will connect. Fragility issues may make traditional interconnections impossible, so it may be more likely that microscale wireless technologies would be used. Xerox admits that Xerographic microassembly is still in its early stages of testing, as the researchers are years from simultaneously placing many thousands of circuits accurately in a fraction of a second. And even then, this would be only the first step in designing a practical system for commercial use.

Either way, Xerox definitely has the qualifications to make strides with such a revolutionary new process, as the original leaders in print technology and later a forge for several stars in the field of nanotechnology. If it can work out all the kinks in Xerographic microassembly, and successfully merge assembly of electronic and mechanical components in new ways, there will definitely be some interesting products on the horizon.

Suzanna Brooks joined Mouser Electronics in 2011 as a Technical Content Specialist and writes web content about the newest embedded and optoelectronic products available. Suzanna holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and is a private pilot.