Spansion LLC, a joint venture between Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Fujitsu Ltd., is continuing to research non-volatile memory made using polymer electronics, an executive said Tuesday (Oct. 11). This is despite the departure of a leading polymer electronics expert and director of Spansion’s east coast research laboratory.
At its formation Spansion (Sunnyvale, Calif.) acquired ownership of polymer technology developed by Coatue Corp., a startup that had been based on the U.S. east coast. Coatue had claimed to have built arrays of non-volatile memory cells in polymer technology, and was acquired by AMD for an undisclosed amount early in 2003 before being folded into Spansion as part of AMD’s contribution of assets to the joint venture.
However, in the subsequent two years little has been heard about the development of plastic non-volatile memory at Spansion. Intel Corp., which had its own plastic memory research program going with a Opticom ASA, a Nordic research company, appears to have put plastic memory aside, after finding the technology could not meet operational requirements.
In addition, Stuart Spitzer, who had been Coatue’s vice president of engineering and became director of Spansion LLC's Boston Research Labs, left Spansion recently to become vice president of materials and engineering, at Konarka Technologies Inc. This led some observers to speculate that the polymer memory was also being put aside at Spansion.
“We actually look at a number of technologies. As a leader in the non-volatile memory field we continue to investigate plastic and a number of other technologies,” John Nation, Spansion technical marketing manager, told EE Times.
