Promex Archives - Medical Design Sourcing

Heterogenous integration packs big innovation into small medical devices

Heterogenous integration can help device developers fit more innovative technologies into smaller devices.

By Dick Otte, Promex

[Image courtesy of Promex Industries]

The electronics industry began using the term heterogeneous integration (HI) about five years ago to describe a new approach to building semiconductor devices that would allow for greater density and capability. The legacy approach to making transistors, lines, and spaces smaller was becoming more difficult due to the limitations of lithography. Thus, a new idea was spawned: adding material and/or parts to die on conventional complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) wafers to add functionality beyond what is inherent in silicon CMOS.

John Bowers at the University of California Santa Barbara pioneered an early HI example, placing a small piece of indium phosphide onto a waveguide fabricated on a silicon wafer. Doing so made it possible …

Navigating thermally induced dynamics when developing miniaturized medical devices

Examples of mismatched materials of varying thermal dynamics, cured at various temperatures, causing warpage, cracking and potential breakage. The results are based on the forces that are present during matching and the assembly processes. [Photo courtesy of Promex]

Understanding and managing thermally induced dynamics during assembly and use is essential as devices become increasingly integrated and miniaturized.

By Dave Fromm, Promex

Some complexities of integrating miniaturized components, such as microelectronics, into increasingly small medical devices are obvious. Examples include the precision required to position and align components with the requisite accuracy, or the identification of critical-to-function dimensions and methods that control and check assembly steps.

A more hidden and often overlooked complexity is the thermally induced dynamics that occur when producing assemblies at micros…

Promex promotes recent hire to chief operating officer

Promex Industries Chief Operations Officer David Fromm [Photo courtesy of Promex]

Promex today said it has promoted VP of Engineering David Fromm to chief operating officer.

The Santa Clara, California-based subsystems supplier hired Fromm in March. Promex said Fromm will also remain VP of engineering and lead the operations, engineering, and business development teams.

“Dave has walked in the shoes of OEM engineers, project leads, and procurement decision-makers. He is uniquely qualified to bring a customer-focused perspective to every aspect of the Promex business,” Promex CEO Richard Otte said in a news release. “He understands how to partner for turnkey, vertically integrated approaches to creating the smallest, most complex medical devices that are enabled with microelectronics.”

Before joining Promex, Fromm worked with the company as a customer for nearly 10 years. He was previously director…