vibration-prone environments, mechanical interfaces
must therefore be engineered with redundancy,
stronger alloys, or reinforced geometries. Even the
smallest design flaws at this scale may lead to early
failures, which are compounded when millions of units
must be produced per month with tight tolerances.
At the same time, manufacturability becomes
more complex as miniaturization pushes the limits
of stamping, molding, and plating technologies.
Tolerances once reserved for wafer-level fabrication
must now be met in high-throughput production
environments. Fortunately, this demand for precision
manufacturing has driven a virtuous cycle. As
equipment capabilities improve, they unlock new
packaging strategies, which, in turn, drive further
miniaturization of downstream systems.
Along with packaging strategies, system qualification
must also evolve as devices miniaturize. Miniaturized
components now resemble integrated circuits in
form factor, but their reliability must be
validated across multiple materials
and bonding techniques.
Generally, failures in ultra-
C h a p t e r 1 | T h e Fu n d a m e n t a l s o f M i n i a t u r i z a t i o n
Some designs require significant
miniaturization to meet the demands of
a compact form factor. In one case, we
achieved this using a multi-layer flex-rigid
PCB to distribute components across the
temple arms, a low-power MCU with an
integrated ISP for image processing, and
careful power optimization to enable
all-day operation from a compact
Li-Po cell."
Mohsen Fatoorechi
Principal Electronics and Embedded Systems Engineer,
Cortirio
8
11 Experts on Miniaturized Electronics Design and Applications
