NextFlex, America’s Flexible Hybrid Electronics (FHE) Manufacturing Institute, announced that Jason Marsh, its director of technology, and Dr. Anwar Mohammed, senior director of the Advanced Engineering Group at Flex, Inc. will deliver the joint keynote at 2017FLEX. The annual conference for technologists in the flexible electronics industry will be held June 19-22 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Monterey, Calif.
 
Titled “Flexible and Stretchable Hybrid Electronics Manufacturing for Wearables: Challenges and Solutions,” the keynote is set for Tuesday, June 20, at 8:45 a.m. Dr. Mohammed will describe the most critical manufacturing challenges for wearable electronics applications: materials technology, deposition and printing, water ingress, interconnect technology, printed electronics, power supplies and lack of standards, particularly for reliability. Then, together they will touch on potential solutions currently being developed, including the use of nanomaterials, low-temperature soldering, stretchable conductors, printable batteries and water-resistant coatings.
 
Marsh will share how industry needs shape the Institute’s technology road maps, which, in turn, drive the project calls issued by NextFlex. He will present on the results to date from several of the 24 projects selected for funding from Project Calls 1.0 and 2.0, particularly those that represent solutions to the challenges discussed earlier in the talk. Finally, he will report on lessons learned in terms of process and capability gaps - a key focus of the current Project Call 3.0, which opened on May 31.