On April 11 and 12, SEMI (headquartered in San Jose, Ca) opened in Tokyo the “2017 FLEX JAPAN” which is a conference of experts in the field of flexible hybrid electronics (FHE). The conference was held for the first time in Japan and participated by domestic lecturers and an audience of more than 250.

FHE is a technology to comprise a system by combining printed electronics, IC, MEMS and textile, and is expected to be diffused extensively to IoT applications in the future. The potential applicable fields include wearable devices, flexible display, on-board use, smart home and smart city all of which are expected to be potential.

In October 2015, SEMI signed a strategic partnership agreement with Flex Tech Alliance which is an American industrial entity of FHE. Since then SEMI has been holding FLEX mainly for conference events in Europe (October 2016) and Southeast Asia (October 2016). SEMI is planning to hold FLEX in Korea (June 1, 2017 Seoul) and the US (June 19 to 22, 2017 Monterey, Ca) following Japan this time.

Osamu Nakamura (head of SEMI Japan) said in his opening address, “I hope this will lead to a new opportunity to contact with the textile field and expand the way to make effective uses in terms of the deployment from the conventional hardware electronics to flexible fields.”

In addition, an industrial exhibition was also held and 23 companies participated. Horiba STEC as company related to gas technology introduced mass-flow controller, liquid material vaporizing system for supply to chamber, compact process gas monitor to measure residual gas or water in chamber, plasma emission controller (for contribution to high-speed and stabilization of deposition by plasma condition control) and non-contact thermometer to realize high-accuracy temperature control in the deposition process