06.10.19
NextFlex released Project Call 5.0 (PC 5.0) – the latest call for proposals to fund projects that seek to further the development and adoption of FHE.
Response to the first four project calls exceeded expectations, resulting in more than $73 million in investment.
The PC 5.0 total project value is expected to exceed $10.5 million (project value/investment figures include cost-sharing) bringing the total anticipated investment in advancing flexible hybrid electronics since NextFlex’s formation to more than $83.5M.
NextFlex has experienced an increasingly focused Project Call process, building upon developments from preceding Project Calls. PC 1.0 focused largely on FHE application areas in two large markets: human health monitoring and structural asset monitoring. PC 2.0 benefitted from the NextFlex roadmap activity by identifying gaps resulting from that early work. As a result, some equipment development efforts were launched to create tools tailored for FHE production. PC 3.0 turned the focus to two areas: Subsystem development and manufacturing process and capability gaps. PC 4.0 focused on key needs in the FHE manufacturing process and demonstrated newly enabled applications in digital health, commercial aviation and national security needs.
Project Call 5.0 focuses on challenges related to scalable manufacturing and application-driven manufacturing gaps that have been prioritized by the community across a wide range of application areas – from anti-counterfeiting to structural health monitoring to hypersonics. These areas cover the spectrum from design tools to fabrication processes to materials data generation.
“Our Project Calls address industry-driven problems, those critical manufacturing issues that are best solved collaboratively,” said Malcolm J. Thompson, NextFlex executive director. “Project Call 5.0 will break new ground across many application areas, providing the catalyst needed to drive flexible hybrid electronics toward commercialization and showcasing NextFlex’s focus on advancing National Defense priorities by co-investing in projects identified by DoD Agencies.”
Project proposals should tackle these industry-driven problems and offer solutions that include a plan for transitioning projects to the U.S. industrial manufacturing base, and should focus on manufacturing challenges in these areas:
- Demonstration of Inkjet Printing as a Path to Digital Manufacturing;
- DataCubes for the FHE Material and Process Database;
- Flexible Hybrid Electronics Process Design Kit 2.0;
- Structural Health Monitoring: Scalable Manufacturing of Embedded Sensors;
- Trusted Flexible Hybrid Electronics, Anti-Counterfeiting, and Data Privacy;
- Evaluation and Testing of Flexible Batteries;
- Additively Manufactured High Temperature Electronics for Hypersonics
To demonstrate and develop applications of priority for National Defense and advance the manufacturability of the resulting solutions, these topics have co-investment or follow-up funding interest from DoD agencies:
- Temperature and Humidity Sensing in Extreme Environments;
- Conformal Antennas for Telemetry;
- Flexible Interconnects for Large Deployable X-Band Phased Arrays
