NextFlex, America’s Flexible Hybrid Electronics (FHE) Manufacturing Institute (San Jose, California), announced it has successfully proven the robustness of the FHE manufacturing process, producing multiple functional samples of a flexible Arduino system. As part of the Flexible Arduino Microcontroller Project, NextFlex redesigned a device typically built on a rigid printed circuit board (PCB)—by printing and attaching thin bare die on a flexible substrate while maintaining the performance associated with traditional packaged ICs. This achievement is ultimately intended to help realise FHE’s enormous potential for creating ubiquitous IoT and sensor products for consumer, commercial, and military applications.
In the last few years several brands have experimented with NFC enabled smart packaging, but these trials have primarily been in low volume marketing campaigns. A significant reduction in cost is required to progress to high volume, mass market roll out.
PV Nano Cell from Israel, an innovative producer of conductive digital inks, announced the closing of its acquisition of DigiFlex, a digital printer manufacturer. The all-stock transaction was valued at US$10M and represents 25% of PV Nano Cell on a fully diluted basis, post transaction. Additionally, certain shareholders of DigiFlex and its subsidiary, JetCU P.C.B. Ltd., committed to investing $1.1M in PV Nano Cell, of which $500 000 has already been invested, and an additional $600 000 is expected to close by the end of 2017.
