Now in its sixth year, Design World’s LEAP Awards continue to showcase the best engineering innovations across several design categories. It’s a large undertaking that wouldn’t be possible without the commitment and support of the engineering community. WTWH Media is not involved with selecting the winners. Rather, each year, the editorial team assembles OEM design engineers and academics from around the country to create a distinguished and independent judging panel. Below is their selection for this year’s LEAP Awards winners in the Advanced Materials category.
GOLD
SiTime
SiTime’s MEMS-based precision timing devices
What the judges had to say: “The MEMS technology has shown significant improvement in new technology. Move over Quartz, your time is done. Pun intended.”
Timing devices are the heartbeat of every electronic system, providing accurate, stable frequency control of digital components. SiTime is disrupting the timing market by replacing fragile quartz crystals with resonators built with advanced microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology. Traditionally, the most common clock sources are crystal oscillators, a 70-year-old technology that has reached a point of maturity yielding only marginal improvements.
SiTime’s silicon MEMS-based resonators and oscillators are 50 times more reliable than quartz, making them an ideal alternative to crystal oscillators for today’s demanding applications. Silicon MEMS devices are used throughout electronic systems, serving as gyroscopes, accelerometers, microphones, sensors, magnetometers, and many other functions. All silicon MEMS devices, including SiTime’s MEMS resonators, are manufactured at scale in mainstream fabs, providing cost-effective technology for countless applications.
MEMS resonators are much smaller than quartz crystals, enabling smaller footprint timing devices for space-sensitive designs. Smaller size and less mass mean more resilience to environmental shock and vibration. Compared to quartz, MEMS resonators have 100x better resilience to EMI disturbances.
This resiliency is beneficial for applications with high currents and electromagnetic fields. Silicon MEMS timing devices have excellent intrinsic material properties, enabling excellent frequency accuracy over temperature. A typical MEMS oscillator has a stability of ±50 ppm over -40°C to +125°C – 5x better than quartz.
SILVER
TE Connectivity
GreenSilver Surface Technology
TE is leading the change in advancements toward CO2 neutrality efforts by achieving an industry breakthrough for delivering a significant
environmentally sustainable alternative to a surface technology process that has been used for over a hundred years. At the same time, automakers can achieve substantial improvements in the environmental footprint of their products with the use of GreenSilver – TE’s groundbreaking sustainable high-performance contact surface technology.
GreenSilver’s breakthrough surface plating technology uses virtually no freshwater, generates no hazardous wastewater, and uses 35% less energy while at the same time delivering the pinnacle of superior performance, vibration, temperature, and mating force and mating cycles, and green connectivity after being applied to TE’s HPF 1.2 and AMP MCP high-performance connector systems.
BRONZE
Jabil, Inc.
Jabil PLA 3110P
Jabil PLA 3110P is a novel powder based on a renewably sourced biomaterial that offers a bio-based alternative to petrochemical-based powders, such as Nylon-12 (PA 12). Developed in collaboration with NatureWorks, a leading manufacturer of polylactic acid (PLA) biopolymers, PLA 3110P is made with NatureWorks IngeoTM PLA while leveraging
Jabil’s “beaker to box” material innovations deliver the first-ever PLA-based powder made from a renewably sourced biomaterial and optimized for powder-bed fusion technologies.
Filed Under: Awards • acquisitions
