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ISSUE N°16 • OCTOBER 2013
M a g a z i n e o n M E M S T e c h n o l o g i e s & M a r k e t s
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MEMS’Trends
POWERED BY YOLE DÉVELOPPEMENT
MEMS technology evolution
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Manufacturing trends for consumer inertial MEMS
Supported by:
Sponsored by:
New Technologies for the Next-GenerationInertial MEMS, Laurent Robin,Yole Développement
Advanced Packaging and Integration Techniquesfor Inertial MEMS, Robert Hergert, SUSS MicroTec Inc.
Introductionof the MEMS Industry Group,Karen Lightman, MEMS Industry Group
E D I T O R I A L
M E M S ’ T r e n d s 3
O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3 I S S U E N ° 1 6
PLATINUM PARTNERS:
PZT thin fi lms, 300mm, magnetic materials,new detection principles… What does the future hold for MEMS production?
In this issue of MEMS' Trends, we’re giving some attention to MEMS technology
evolution, since this is one of the MEMS world’s biggest questions, particularly
in terms of reducing cost and providing more integrated devices for consumer
applications.
Different “evolutionary opinions” will be reviewed in this issue, i.e. an evolution
driven by the pressure to reduce costs; an evolution focused on new materials and
new approaches; and lastly, an evolution involving PZT thin fi lms, which are already
being developed by many MEMS companies worldwide. In fact, STMicroelectronics
and its partners in the EU’s Lab4MEMS project hope to develop reliable MEMS
processes with PZT thin fi lms. Besides this project, it’s interesting to note that
other MEMS supply chain players are also involved, such as Solmates, which is
likely to be the only successful MEMS equipment start-up from the last few years;
and GlobalFoundries, which has just announced foundry services for piezo MEMS.
As new fi lm stacks and new materials emerge, a wider range of deposition/etch
technologies will be needed. This is why there’s still room for improvement in
Bosch’s 20-year-old DRIE process. Along these lines, wafer bonding is targeting
room temperature operation, and 300mm MEMS tools are just around the corner!
We’ll also discuss how complex sensor fusion is moving from sensors to a dedicated
hub; how ASIC requirements are becoming more demanding; and a new, innovative
multi-gas sensor platform.
Enjoy this last MEMS' Trends issue of 2013!
Dr Eric MounierSenior Analyst,MEMS Devices & Technologies,Yole Dé[email protected]
For more information, please contact S. Leroy ([email protected])
...As new fi lm stacks and new materials
emerge, a widerrange of deposition/
etch technologies will be needed...
• IWLPCNov. 4 to 6 - San Jose, CA, USA
• MEMS Executive Congress Nov. 7 to 8 - San Jose, CA, USA
• MEPTEC - Packaging & Known Good DieNov. 20 to 21 - Santa Clara, CA, USA
• Semicon JapanDec. 4 to 6 - Chiba, Japan
E V E N T S
O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3 I S S U E N ° 1 6
GOLD PARTNERS:
FINANCIAL BUZZ • A quiet summer for MEMS transactions 6
MEMS IN THE WORLD • MEMS foundries in China! 7
INDUSTRY REVIEW • What’s next for MEMS technology? 8
• ASIC suppliers introduce some programmable options 12
ANALYST CORNER • Inertial sensor market moves to combo sensors and sensor hubs 16
COMPANY INSIGHT • MEMS equipment startup SolMateS aims at pulsed laser deposition
of PZT thin fi lm 20
• Sensirion targets multi-gas sensor Platform 22
• CEA-Leti and Tronics see piezoresistive platform as alternativeto capacitive sensing 24
• SPTS: Smaller, more complex MEMS structures drive demand for new etchcapabilities 26
EVENT REVIEW• Smart systems raises interest from European private investors 28
C O N T E N T S
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W i t h 2 0 , 5 0 0 m o n t h l y v i s i t o r s , i-Micronews.com provides for MEMS area: cur rent news, market & technological analysis, key leader interviews, webcasts section, reverse engineering / costing, events calendar, latest reports…
Please visit our website to discover the last top stories in MEMS:• Latest report: 6 and 9 axis sensors:
consumer inertial combos report• Next webcast: Manufacturing trends
for consumer inertial MEMS, on Nov.13 at 8.00 AM PDT (Sponsored by SUSS MicroTec, and supported by MIG)
• News: InvenSense™ to acquire MEMS microphone business line from Analog Devices, Incorporated
• News: Analog MEMS accelerometer suits engine anti-vibration and electrically controlled suspension applications
4 M E M S ’ T r e n d s
Leonardo da Vinci mechanical principles drawings: the gears(Public domain)
Follow Yole’s experts and exhibit!
Get your booth now!Japan has the world largest installed fab capacity of 4.4 million 200 mm equivalent wafers per month. 300mm fab capacity in Japan is expected to increase to 840,000 wafers per month, making the region the third largest 300mm fab capacity base globally.
Over the next several years, fab spending in Japan will be directed towards the production of NAND Flash, power SEMICONductors, high-brightness LEDs, and CMOS image sensors where Japan leads the global market.
Japan supplies 35 percent of equipment and 70 percent of materials purchased by the global SEMICONductor manufacturing industry.
Connecting customers!Besides the exhibition area, SEMICON Japan offers exhibitors the opportunity to enhance their visibility via:
• Buyer Meeting programsSupplier Search and Device Maker Meeting Rooms are match making programs for SEMICON Japan exhibitors.Past participations: GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Panasonic, Renesas Electronics, Rohm, Samsung, Texas Instruments Japan and Toshiba.
• Presentation stagesMultiple stages are set up at strategic spots on the show floor to give exhibitors presentation opportunities and to guide visitors throughout the show floor.
• Theme focused pavilionsSEMICON Japan spotlights leading edge technologies and emerging markets with theme focused pavilions to maximize the exhibitors’ visibility and connection to visitors.
As for several years, Yole Développement is attending SEMICON Japan as exhibitor and speaker. Does your company plan to attend SEMICON Japan 2013 as well? Mark your agenda and contact us right now to organize your participation:
We book for you, your exhibition space now and so ensure your visibility towards the semiconductor community.
Number of booths is limited. Book it right now!
Don’t miss this opportunity to highlight your technology towards the industrials
Contact: Sandrine Leroy, Media & Communication Manager, Yole Développement ([email protected])
SEMICON Japan 2013 is your opportunity for extending and deepening your connections in the Japan semiconductor industry.
Where: Chiba, JapanWhen: Dec. 4 to 6, 2013What: Exhibition
“SEMICON Japan serves as an ideal venue for subsystems - components - raw materials suppliers to showcase their technology in front of the leading equipment and materials companies visiting and exhibiting at the show”, says Christophe Fitamant, Sales & Marketing Director, Yole Développement.
December 4-6 I MAkuhari Messe, Japan
The Power of [χ]
A quiet summer for MEMS transactions
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F I N A N C I A L B U Z Z
Laurent Robin, Activity Leader,Inertial MEMS Devices& Technologies, Yole Développement
Only four important MEMS deals were listed in the past three months; it seems MEMS investors also enjoyed their vacations!
Company Product type Investment type
New investment
levelInvestors Yole Développement comment
July 2013
CALIENT Technologies
(USA)
Photonic switching products based
on internal MEMS mirror technology
15th round $27M
Combination of new and existing investors
(Cayuga Venture Fund, Intuitive
Venture Partners, TeleSoft Partners)
CALIENT Technologies raised $27M of a $36.6M equity round offering. Over the past few quarters, CALIENT has set records in terms of revenue and booking, driven by network growth and server deployments. This new round will be used to expand the product/technology portfolio and support the company's growth.
New investments (VC rounds, IPOs)
Company Product type Transaction type
Transaction value Acquirer Yole Développement comment
July 2013
Advanced Liquid Logic
(USA)
Microfl uidics-based liquid handling tool
Acquisition NA Illumina
Illumina gains access to another technology and IP portfolio which will strengthen its next-generation sequencing capabilities. Advanced Liquid Logic developed a lab-on chip technology based on electrowetting, which allows for precise handling of low sample volumes. We note that over the past few years Advanced Liquid Logic has obtained $56M in investments, including research grants.Financial terms of the Illumina deal were not disclosed.
Aug. 2013
Discera(USA)
Silicon MEMS timing
Acquisition NA Micrel
Discera is a major player in silicon MEMS oscillators and clock generators for Consumer, Networking and Storage applications. Thus, this is a very good fi t for Micrel, which is heavily involved in clock synthesizer solutions for similar end-markets. In addition to expanding Micrel's timing product line, this acquisition will bring additional MEMS capabilities, in terms of providing MEMS foundry services for many years. We note that Discera, as a fabless company, has worked with Teledyne Dalsa, one of Micrel's direct competitors.The acquisition amount is undisclosed. Discera's revenue was rather small (estimated around $6M for 2012), but the company has strong growth potential and exceptional technology/market positioning.Silicon MEMS timing solutions adoption is steadily increasing. Though currently there are only two MEMS players in volume production -- SiTime and Discera -- many new players are entering the market. Competition is increasing and large players are getting involved!
Sept. 2013
Qioptiq(LU)
Thermopile-based optical systems
Acquisition NA Excelitas Technologies
This is a major deal in the Optoelectronics industry, as the combined entity will boast 5,000 employees.Synergies are expected from this transaction, as each entities' target market and supply chain position are different. Qioptiq is largely involved in Security, while Excelitas is highly visible in Industrial markets. Both companies target Medical.On the MEMS side, we note that Qioptiq was mostly an integrator of infrared sensors (buying from Ulis and maybe Excelitas), while Excelitas does its own thermopiles.
M&A
www.yole.fr
As confi rmed by Illumina's new acquisition, there's still considerable interest in lab-on-chip solutions based on innovative
microfl uidic technologies. But the most striking deal is the acquisition of Discera, the #2 company in silicon MEMS timing was acquired by Micrel. This is another step towards market acceptance of MEMS in the Timing industry, and further evidence of
consolidation. Lastly, it's nice to see investments are still happening in the Telecom Optical MEMS industry, driven by network growth and server deployments. Autumn will be busier for sure! Indeed we got a last-minute information concerning InvenSense acquisition of Analog Devices MEMS microphone business line. There will be a lot to say about this transaction announced on October 14, 2013...
As everyone knows, MEMS has long been a hot topic in China. We’ve seen an increasing number of design houses appear, each catering
to various MEMS components. The hottest components are inertial sensors/combo sensors (accelerometers, gyroscopes, etc.), MEMS microphones, pressure sensors, and infrared detectors/imagers. In addition to the emergence of design houses, existing MEMS foundries as well as companies capable of providing MEMS foundry services are making a concerted effort to access these technologies and win contracts.
Unfortunately, the Chinese MEMS foundry business model is not simple as in other corners of the world. In fact, a previous Yole Développement analysis shows that Return on Investment is at least 7 - 8 years and foundry activity represents only 10% of the total Chinese MEMS industry value. In other words, emerging Chinese MEMS foundries still have a long way to go. Currently, Yole Développement doesn’t see any mature Chinese MEMS foundries which possess stable partners and continuous contracts. However, we do see many emerging Chinese foundries trying to qualify their services.
These fl edgling Chinese foundries have diverse origins. Many are big IC foundries attracted by the MEMS industry’s upside. For instance, Shanghai-based SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation), one of China’s biggest, most successful IC foundries, has been interested in MEMS for a long time. Several years ago, it was active in MEMS microphone production. However, due to various reasons, this activity ceased. SMIC is now attempting to restart its MEMS business and develop its advanced packaging capabilities. To this end, it recently announced the formation of a center for Vision, Sensors and 3DIC (CVS3D) which will consolidate and strengthen its R&D and manufacturing capabilities for MEMS sensors, TSV technologies and other middle-end wafer process technologies. For SMIC, this is a big step towards becoming a full-fl edged MEMS foundry.
Other aspiring foundries with similar backgrounds are ASMC (Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation), CSMC Technologies Corporation, GSMC (Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation), HuaHong NEC, and Belling. Some have already developed MEMS sensor production capabilities and have begun signing contracts with local Chinese MEMS players.
Another budding MEMS foundry type has its roots in MEMS R&D. One such company is Nanopolis in Suzhou. Based on its strong MEMS R&D expertise and the benefi ts of the Suzhou Nanotech Research and Development Park, Nanopolis is building MEMS production lines in order to help fulfi ll China’s huge need.
There also exist potential MEMS foundries which may lack MEMS expertise but which possess the ambition and infrastructure to be successful. Hanking, a mining and metal processing conglomerate in China’s northeast, is one example. In 2012, Hanking decided to build a wafer fab. Initially it wanted to provide MEMS foundry service, but it ultimately decided to become a MEMS IDM. Also in this category is BYD, which began as a battery specialist before expanding its product portfolio to include cars, image sensors and power devices. Now they too are planning to launch a MEMS foundry.
From Beijing to Zibo, companies short on experience but long on desire are entering the MEMS market with a similar approach. Yole Développement predicts these players may need more time than other, more “MEMS familiar” players, since they lack a MEMS technology base and therefore must make a more concerted effort to access this burgeoning market, and the knowledge required to succeed within it.
www.yole.fr
MEMS foundries in China
Wenbin Ding, Technology & Market
analyst, MEMS Devices& Technologies,
Yole Développement
With the growth of China’s MEMS industry and the development of a complete value chain and supply chain, the need for indigenous Chinese MEMS foundries has never been greater. In this article, Yole Développement will provide a general overview of China’s MEMS foundry industry, and share its prediction for this fast-growing region.
Wenbin Ding is a full time analyst at Yole Développement. She has worked for several technology and market analysis and has strong involvement in researches of Chinese market.She holds a Microelectronics Engineering Degree from the National Engineering School in Caen, plus a Master Degree in Business Administration from IAE Caen, France.
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“In fact, a previous Yole Développement analysis shows that return on investment is at
least 7 - 8 years,” says Wenbin Ding.
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What’s next for MEMS technology?
M E M S ’ T r e n d s8
Lab4MEMS aims at volume technology for PZT thin fi lm, permalloy and 3D SiP STMicroelectronics and its partners in the $37 million Lab4MEMS project aim to develop high volume processes for manufacture of MEMS with PZT thin fi lm, permalloy magnetic material, and 3D packaging, running on pilot lines available for use by European research organizations and small businesses. Demonstration products will be a piezoelectric print head, a single-die 3-axis magnetometer, and packaging for a multichip inertial sensor module with vertical interconnects beyond wire bonding.
The European Community project aims to optimize these new processes for low cost volume manufacturing, validate the supply chains for them, and add pilot fab capability at STMicroelectronics’ 200mm Agrate Brianza facility, and packaging capability at its back end facility in Malta. The two and a half year effort started in January and runs through mid 2015. Participating partners include equipment and material suppliers Datacon, KLA-Tencor, Okmetic, PICOSUN, and SolMateS; device
makers STMicroelectronics, Cavendish Kinetics, and Sonitor; and some ten European universities and research institutes.
The technology demonstrator for ramping volume PZT thin fi lm technology is a printhead for industrial/commercial markets, where the thin fi lm piezoelectric technology could enable a lower cost/high performance alternative to bulk piezo printheads heads now used to print on everything from textiles to tiles to plastics. STMicroelectronics is working with equipment suppliers to develop a process for thin fi lm piezo deposition that suits its existing high volume 8-inch MEMS line, while matching the quality and reliability of the bulk piezo product. “A big part of the challenge is to develop a process technology capable of high volume production,” notes Anton Hofmeister, head of STMicroelectronics’s Fluidics MEMS Division. Making a reliable PZT piezoelectric membrane by today’s technologies takes numerous iterations, so it’s time consuming and costly, he explains. Integrating the piezo membrane with the rest of
Researchers developing the next generation of MEMS devices look to new piezo electric and magnetic materials, new sensing mechanisms like resonant frequency, and new approaches for bonding and etching.
“Once we have developed the
process for the print head, ST will have
a world class piezo fi lm to also use for
other applications,” says Anton Hofmeister,
STMicroelectronics.
EVG bonding tool.(Courtesy of EV Group)
I N D U S T R Y R E V I E W
the process fl ow and building a wafer stack for a printhead is a challenge, while meeting the stringent performance requirements for commercial printers. The project is also working on improving the metrology for surface analysis, uniformity, and adhesion, adds Roberto Zafalon, STMicroelectronics General Coordinator of the Lab4MEMS project, emphasizing that the key challenge is to bring these new materials into reliable high volume production without impacting the overall productivity of the fab.
“Once we have developed the process for the print head, STMicroelectronics will have a world class piezo fi lm to also use for other applications,” says Anton Hofmeister, listing off options including energy harvesting, hard disc drives, micromirrors and medical applications with fl uid pumping. “Piezo technology is an important expansion of STMicroelectronics MEMS portfolio.”
The project also targets new magnetic material for making all three magnetometer axes on the same die-- instead of having to use a separate die for the vertical axis-- to ease integration into combination inertial sensors for compasses in mobile phones and GPS. Here they are focusing on permalloy, as a mature material likely to ramp to volume with few surprises, which can be deposited with good control and patterned into complex geometries. One possibility to integrate the vertical axis is a trench structure similar to a DRAM cell. Project partner VTT is also working on a chevron solution. Here the need is also for improving design and simulation tools to better handle the complexity of integrating new materials for faster ramp up. “The real challenge here too is to guarantee high volume production at the end of development, compatible with the demanding needs of
STMicroelectronics existing MEMS motion sensor business,” says Hofmeister.
The third focus is a solution for packaging a three-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope, 3-axis magnetometer, and the controlling ASIC into a single package, with vertical interconnections by fl ip-chip, through-silicon vias and through-mold vias instead of wire bonds. Researchers are looking at laser drilling as a potential lower cost alternative for making irregular patterns of 75-200μm-scale through-wafer vias, among other options. Eliminating lithography of the TSVs could provide higher throughput production of the small numbers of deep vias typical of MEMS devices. “The big challenge is accurate alignment at low cost,” says Roberto Zafalon. While this is partly a function of highly accurate chip-to-chip or chip-to-substrate tolerances on the assembly equipment, approaches to reduce the cost of optical alignment or to design architectures for self-alignment for assembly and bonding may also be needed to meet the very demanding cost requirements for packaging.
Initial test production of all three demonstration products is slated for later this year.
Hot device topics coming out of R&D are resonant devices and gas sensors
Next generation MEMS devices will likely include sensors and actuators using resonance in creative ways, and more gas sensors, to judge from what’s coming out of the research labs these days. MEMS resonant devices and gas sensors are trends to watch, says Keith Jackson, a Senior MEMS Engineer at A.M.Fitzgerald & Associates, pointing to the high volume of papers on the topics at recent technical conferences. “Change in resonant
frequency is a novel approach for higher sensitivity sensing and easier integration with CMOS,” he notes, pointing to a few of the 250 papers on the topic at Transducers this summer in Barcelona. Change in resonant frequency with temperature could be more sensitive than the thermopile technologies now commonly used for infrared sensing in uncooled microbolometers, and easier to make on silicon. Researchers from Northeastern, for example, demonstrated that incoming IR can heat a highly temperature- sensitive suspended piezoelectric bridge of AlN, to change its resonant frequency and its electrical signal. Resonant frequency could even be a more sensitive sensing mechanism for magnetometers. STMicroelectronics and the Politecnico di Milano explored using the signal amplifi cation that occurs at resonance to make a magnetometer with similar sensitivity to a traditional comb-fi nger design but with less change in capacitance and tighter bandwidth, due to higher Q from less damping in the fringe-fi eld Lorenz device.
Resonance can also be used to make some kinds of switches and actuators, where the oscillation can serve as a very low power actuator for regular or fi xed- frequency motion. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have demonstrated resonating RF fi lters made from structures which touch contacts at both extremes of their movement at particular frequencies, for very effi cient selection and transmission of RF frequencies, with very low power usage. Scanning mirrors which only go back and forth across the display at a fi xed rate are another possibility, as oscillation allows large movement to cover a wide area with very low power usage. Researchers at FujiFilm and Tohoku University in Japan have demonstrated a 1mm x 1mm micromirror driven at 55KHz over a 144° scanning angle by only 5V.
Gas sensors are another hot area of research, with over 30 papers at Transducers. The effort to reduce the size and power usage of common gas sensors to integrate them with mobile electronics has resulted in development of many fi lms --both of polymers and of porous metal oxide thin fi lms and nanowires-- that can be deposited as the last step on CMOS to make a sensor die. Progress is also being made on CO2 sensors that are not also sensitive to humidity, and on sensors that do not need heating to work. NXP and several Dutch universities report they’ve have found a polymer sensitive to CO2 alone that can work at room temperature for low power
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Illustration of resonant switch, showing the oscillating body impacting contacts in one direction in the on mode, not in the off mode. (Metal micromechanical fi lter-power amplifi er utilizing a displacement-amplifying resonant switch,” the 17th Int. Conf. on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators, & Microsystems (Transducers’13))
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usage. Capacitive sensors topped with a droplet of this polymer respond to chemical changes in the polymer in the presence of CO2 in 2 minutes, and then clear in 15 minutes, without heat. The product is aimed at monitoring the quality of packaged foods in shipping, where the changes in the gases within the package can indicate spoilage.
Cost pressures drive other industry changes
Beyond these new materials and new approaches to making MEMS devices, a host of other changes in manufacturing technology are being driven by the pressure to reduce costs. That means everything from standard technology platforms, to more controllable high volume processes, to bonding with lower temperature and smaller bond lines, to more wafer level packaging. The proliferation of the open platform technologies that have become available in the last year or so--for inertial sensors from InvenSense, STMicroelectronics, and XFab, and pressure sensors from A.M. Fitzgerald and Silex—are an option that could drive down development time and costs for many players, potentially changing the competitive landscape. “We’re excited to see where this goes,” says Keith Jackson, who notes that these options can be a good solution for companies that need a custom version of a standard type of device in small to medium volumes, such as a pressure sensor with particular specifi cations. It can also be an option for companies that can save a lot of time and development effort if they can fi nd a way to design a new device within the boundaries set by the existing platform. While these may not be unique or ideally optimized MEMS devices, they may be good enough
to allow IC and systems makers whose main value-add lies elsewhere to add MEMS capabilities to their own products relatively easily, while keeping control of the product and the margins themselves.
The growth of consumer MEMS volumes and cost pressures also requires different things from equipment suppliers. “Before, it was can you do a process step. Now it’s about how well can you do it, says Eric Pabo, EVGroup business development manager for MEMS. “It’s becoming about the control of the process, the throughput and uniformity, the integration with the fab automation system and the fab management information system.”
New technologies for bonding, deposition and etch
But other emerging applications will continue to need specialty processes if they are to move across the “Valley of Death” from emerging technologies into volume markets. “That means we’re spending more of our time now looking for unmet needs for processes that can ferry new products across that valley,” says Eric Pabo.
One of these new process technologies now coming out of development is room temperature covalent bonding, which can form strong bonds between different metals and semiconductor materials without need for annealing, for wafer level packaging and direct bonding of MEMS to CMOS. Initial demand and fi rst product will be for bonding together different compound semiconductor wafers with different coeffi cients of thermal expansion, to build up high effi ciency solar cells for concentrating solar systems. But going forward, a different variant of the process will be optimized for MEMS,
“Change in resonant frequency is a
novel approach for higher sensitivity
sensing and easier integration with
CMOS,” notes Keith Jackson, A.M.Fitzgerald
& Associates.
Thin film sealing
1995 2020 2000 2005 2010 2015
Wafer Bonding
DRIE
XeF2
Room temperature bonding
Steppers
Temporary bonding
TSV
Cavity SOI
Graph here shows the timeline for new MEMS processes adoption. The left side of the arrow is showing the starting time for the technology to be used (e.g. DRIE started to be used in 96’ for Bosch inertial MEMS). We expect to see more innovative MEMS processes to be used in the future: TSV, litho steppers, temporary bonding for thin wafers, room temperature bonding
Adoption cycle for MEMS processes(Source: MEMS Front-End Manufacturing Trends report, April 2013, Yole Développement)
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for wafer-level packaging or bonding mEms to CMOS. One of the first three tools EVG is currently building is for an undisclosed mEms application. Eric Pabo says the company expects to be ready to run process demos in the first half of 2014, and some MEMS demos by early 2015. Key to EvG’s new process is its proprietary preparatory technology for surface preparation for the smoothness, uniformity and cleanliness required for wafers to react and bond at room temperature.
Cost pressures suggest that successful consumer mEms devices will increasingly have to go to wafer-level packaging, argues Eric Pabo. “you won’t be able to join the consumer mEms club without a wafer-level cap or wlP,” he notes, predicting that even mEms microphones and pressure sensors may next move to these lower cost packages.
Cost is also driving mEms towards lower temperature bonding in general to improve throughput, and towards thinner bonding lines to save die space. EvG is seeing more metal-to-metal bonding for devices that need vacuum packaging, as metal bonds can meet the hermeticity requirements, as well as be conductive, and much narrower than glass frit bond lines. As the die size shrinks, the proportion of the die taken up by the bond line becomes increasingly important—in extreme cases up to 60% of a very small die can be covered with wide glass frit lines. with the resolution of stencil-printed glass frit reaching its limit, the industry will need to move to lithographically patterned bonding materials.
new PzT and magnetic materials will also require some new approaches for deposition and etch. sensor-makers are moving to anisotropic magnetoresistive (AmR), and giant magnetoresistance (GmR) sensors to improve performance, and to reduce size and power usage, compared to Hall Effect sensors, especially in their combo sensors. Accordingly, they need to deposit complex multilayer stacks of metals not typically used in mEms, such as niFe (permalloy) for AmR devices, and CoFe for GmR devices. For good performance, the magnetic material needs to have anisotropic alignment along one axis, so the films need to be deposited in a strong magnetic field. Furthermore, thick material needs to be built up of a laminate of thin metal layers separated by insulating layers, such as Aln, to maintain in-plane magnetic orientation and minimize eddy currents. Conveniently, Pvd equipment from the disk drive industry
has already been optimized for high-rate deposition of uniform aligned magnetic films. “magnetic sensors can leverage veeco’s mature hardware and technology from the hard drive industry,” says Jia lee Ph.d., vice President of marketing for veeco Instruments’ etch and deposition business, noting that the magnetron at the source to maximize the pass-through flux, and the magnetic aligning field at the wafer are key.
These hard-to-etch metal stacks, as well as materials such as PzT on Pt electrodes in accelerometers and inkjet print heads, Aln on noble metal contacts in sAw and FBAR filters; and BST on Pt in tunable capacitors, may all require an alternative to reactive ion etching technology. veeco says that these chemically-inert, non-volatile materials can
be physically removed by ion beam etching with precise control, and at faster etch rates than RIE for magnetic materials and platinum electrodes. And, conveniently in this case, the ion beam etching is not very selective, so it etches through various hard-to-etch materials at roughly the same rate, while remaining sufficiently selective to a photoresist mask. “most materials etch at very similar rates up to about 110-150nm/min,” says Jia Lee. Tilting the chuck to vary wafer angle under the highly-directional anisotropic ion beam during etching allows precise control of etched feature profiles.
Paula Doe for Yole Développement
Keith M. Jackson, Ph.D, Senior MEMS Engineer, A. M. Fitzgerald & Associatesdr. Jackson is an senior mEms Engineer with A. m. Fitzgerald & Associates. He has been performing design, process development, and testing in the fields of MEMS and Semiconductors for more than 15 years. His expertise lies in creating novel process-integration solutions that enable both prototypes and transfer to manufacturing. dr. Jackson has previously worked on process development for GE-novasensor and Intel and has two patents. He received his B.s.E. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton university and m.s. and Ph.d. in Electrical Engineering from mIT.
Anton hofmeister, General Manager Fluidic MEMS Division, STMicroelectornicsAnton Hofmeister is the General manager of sT’s Fluidic mEms division, responsible for microfluidic products used in printing systems, medical products and many other emerging new applications. He also manages sT’s Business development for Piezo mEms products and has his office in Agrate Brianza/Italy. during the course of his career, Hofmeister has occupied management positions with
STMicroelectronics in Germany, France, Italy and the USA. He is a German native speaker but also fluent in English, Italian and French. Hofmeister was a member of the management Board of veredus laboratories, a privately held life sciences company, which develops diagnostics tests based on sT’s lab-on-chip technology. He has also participated to Eu expert panels on Europe's future R&d roadmap for biochips and convergence between semiconductors and healthcare.
Jia Lee, Ph.D, Vice President of Marketing, VeecoJia lee, Ph.d. is currently the vice President of marketing for veeco’s etch and deposition business, serving the mEms, data storage and semiconductor industries. Jia joined veeco in 2010, and was most recently senior director of marketing for veeco’s mOCvd Business, where he was engaged in product marketing, business development and strategy covering the HB-lEd industry. Prior to joining veeco, Jia held a variety of senior product marketing
positions at Applied materials, a leading global nanomanufacturing equipment provider to the semiconductor and related industries. Prior he was an Advisory Engineer at IBm microelectronics, where he worked on low-k dielectric material development and integration technologies. dr. lee earned his Ph.d. in Chemical Engineering from Purdue university and his m.B.A. from the university of California at Berkeley. He holds a number of patents related to thin film chemical vapor deposition.
Eric Pabo, Business Development Manager for MEMS, EV Group (EVG).Prior to his current role, he was the bonding applications engineer for Ev Group north America. Before joining EVG, he spent five years working on wafer level packaging and assembly processes at Agilent Technologies. with over 20 years experience in electronics manufacturing, Pabo is a professional engineer registered in the state of Colorado and is currently finishing his Six Sigma Black Belt Certification. Pabo earned a bachelor’s degree in
mechanical engineering from Colorado state university.
Dr. roberto Zafalon, European Technology Programmes Director, r&D and Public Affairs, ItalyHe is in charge to foster and leverage the link between sT technology groups and the R&d cooperative Eu programs. until June 2007 he has been the head of the Competence Center for low Power system design at the Advanced system Technology R&d group in sTmicroelectronics, Agrate Brianza (milano), Italy. In his current capacity since July 2007,
he elaborates the vision and roadmap, seeks for project financing and drives industrial R&D teams to pursue innovative solutions in the field of embedded systems and nanolectronics, for corporate product divisions and labs.
Si-Ware Systems and acam messelectronic are both now offering programmable ASICs that can be customized to different MEMS sensor requirements. First products are targeted at high performance inertial and pressure sensors.
The ASIC can account for as much as a third of the cost of a complex MEMS device, and the MEMS sector’s drive to smaller sensors, weaker signals, complex new devices, and ever more sophisticated sensor processing and fusion likely means the signal processing ASIC is becoming more complex and costly. Now that ASICs for MEMS has matured into a ~$3.4 billion business, according to Yole Développement estimates for 2012, some suppliers see opportunity in developing alternatives to pure custom design to ease development time and costs. While standard sensor signal conditioning circuits are available for some applications, particularly pressure sensors for automotive and industrial markets, they typically lack programmability that allows the user to develop custom sensing and application fi rmware.
Si-Ware Systems offers development platform with programmable ASIC to speed characterization of inertial sensors Si-Ware Systems, as it has transitioned from a design service company to a fabless chip maker, is offering a programmable ASIC for high performance single-axis inertial sensors, that can be adjusted for things like different capacitance ranges, drive frequencies and output parameters. Tronics uses the programmable device for its high performance gyro. Si-Ware Systems is also offering a development platform with this ASIC on a programming board, a daughter sensor board and PC software that allows users to evaluate and characterize their MEMS sensor to see how it performs and make needed adjustments, as well as to evaluate the ASIC. “This can reduce the design cycle from 12-18 months down to 6-9 months,” claims Scott Smyser, EVP marketing and business development. Though the ASIC was developed for high performance, single-axis devices, the development board is intended to be a fl exible platform. Smyser reports that multiples of these programmable ASICs daisy-chained together, as well
ASIC suppliers introduce some programmable optionsEven as requirements for ASICs get more demanding, some suppliers are coming up with potential solutions to speed time to market, introducing programmable devices and development platforms.
I N D U S T R Y R E V I E W
Base board with plug-in module.
(Courtesy of acam messelectronic)
“ASIC makers have to look at incorporating
more functionality, to basically put an MCU
in the device. That means we’re now
starting to put more effort into adding
other functionality than in modeling the
MEMS device”, says Scott Smyser,Si-Ware Systems.
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as some other Si-Ware Systems internal development platforms now made available to customers, have helped several customers get information quickly to speed ASIC development for other types of products as well, including a consumer 2-axis gyro and a 6-axis accelerometer/gyro combo. SiWare manages the fabbing of the designed ASICs and delivers fully tested die.
While MEMS makers are pushing for faster development, they also need increasingly complex designs. “As the MEMS chip itself can now improve mostly by improving yield, and reducing die size and cost, all the other functionality has to be added in the ASIC,” notes Scott Smyser. “ASIC makers have to look at incorporating more functionality, to basically put an MCU in the device. That means we’re now starting to put more effort into adding other functionality than in modeling the MEMS device.”
The MEMS side of the Si-Ware Systems business has recently introduced a spectrometer on a chip, based on its optical-bench-on-silicon technology, while the timing products division says it is close to launching an all CMOS (non-MEMS) oscillator.
acam messelectronic offersmulti-purpose programmable ASICfor capacitive sensors
Also offering an option for a multi-purpose programmable ASIC platform and evaluation board is acam messelectronic. The German fabless ASIC
maker now primarily serves makers of of non-MEMS sensors for industrial markets, supplying the signal conditioning for applications like pressure, humidity, force, and fl ow sensors for HVAC and factory control systems. But it’s starting to work with some MEMS companies as well on using its off-the-shelf programmable ASIC for capacitive MEMS sensors. The fi rst two generations of this ASIC are in use in commercial non-MEMS mid-range pressure and humidity sensors, while the third generation now coming out of development improves the handling of noise so it can be used for high performance pressure and inertial sensors as well.
When the sensor is connected to the evaluation kit with the ASIC, the built in front-end does the signal conditioning, delivering the raw results from up to eight capacitive channels. Firmware on the built-in 48-bit DSP does operations usually handled by an external microcontroller, such as correcting for non-linearity or doing some sensor fusion functions, such as calculating dewpoint from temperature and humidity to control air conditioning systems. Users can also write their own software for other functions, such as application-specifi c thresholds or fi lters. While the off-the-shelf solution can save development costs and time to market, the all purpose multifunction chip does mean that for any particular application, some un-needed functions on the die will take up space and add cost. So the company is considering whether to also offer stripped down or customized solutions in the future.
ASIC MEMS 2012-2018 market value (Source: Status of the MEMS Industry 2013 report, July 2013, Yole Développement)
0
2 000
4 000
6 000
8 000
10 000
12 000
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Others
Oscillators
RF MEMS
Projection systems (small size)
Projection systems (large size)
Micro displays
PIR & thermopiles
Microbolometers
Inertial combos
Digital compass
Gyroscopes
Accelerometers
Microphones
Pressure sensors
InkJet heads
$M
“I’m almost sure that the world will go to higher integration approaches to make the pressure sensors on or in CMOS, such as in tire pressure monitoring systems”, says Ralf Emberger, acam messelectronic.
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M E M S ’ T r e n d s14
“The main reasons customers choose us are high resolution, and wide capacitance range, from femto to nano Farads,” says Ralf Emberger, acam sales manager for the Americas. The company uses time- to- digital conversion instead of the usual analog- to- digital conversion technology, measuring capacitance by the time it takes the sensor capacitor to discharge through a resistor, at very high speed and resolution based on the delay of CMOS logic gates as the basic timing parameter. “This approach has very high intrinsic resolution and low noise,” suggests Ralf Emberger. “It can reduce current usage, as the current only fl ows during measurement. But it’s also something people are not so familiar with.”
acam messelectronic also touts the potential for integrating this all-CMOS IP core in the sensor stack or on the sensor die. “I’m almost sure that the world will go to higher integration approaches to make the pressure sensors on or in CMOS, such as in tire pressure monitoring systems.”
General trend remains towards more complex design requirements
While the value of a packaged MEMS device in general now breaks down as roughly a third the MEMS die, a third the packaging/assembly/ test, and a third the ASIC, the complexity and value of the IC component can vary widely, from as little as ~15% for the tiny and relatively simple sensing for accelerometers and microphones, to as much as 34% for the more complex sensing requirements of automotive gyros and MEMS oscillators.
The relative value of the ASIC components, however, are likely to increase as the requirements for this signal conditioning become increasingly demanding. Demand is moving from separate MEMS sensors to
integrated combinations of sensors, such as 6-axis and 9-axis inertial and magnetometer combinations, integrating multi-sensor calibration and application algorithms. These modules will need signifi cantly more intelligence than that typically in the signal conditioning ASIC traditionally packaged with a single MEMS die. Other emerging MEMS devices will also require increasingly complex ASICs, such as microbolometer arrays that need pixel by pixel control, or the MEMS speakers in development that will need high voltage activation and closed loop controls. Meanwhile the consumer mobile sector is driving down die sizes, which means smaller signals from the ever smaller inertial sensor masses.
These challenges mean even the big MEMS IDMs who have traditionally done both their ASIC design and manufacturing in house are increasingly outsourcing the design to specialists for particularly complex applications, to save on the cost and manpower for these very technical capabilities they do not have internally.
Paula Doe for Yole Développement
Ralf Emberger, Sales Manager, acam messelectronicRalf Emberger got his fi rst degree in electronics and mechatronics from the University of Applied Scienes in Esslingen, Germany. He started his work career as a design enigneer at acam messelectronic gmbh in 2003. Later he changed to product support and marketing within the company and did his MBA in part-time at Durham Business School, UK. His current role at acam is Sales Manager of North- and South America.
Scott Smyser, EVP W/W Marketing & Business Development, Si-Ware Systems Scott has a broad range of experience in the semiconductor industry as an executive and strategy consultant for companies focused on timing devices, MEMS sensors and wireless technologies. He has led and advised various companies in the industry with an emphasis on marketing, technology, and product development. Scott is currently Executive Vice President for Si-Ware Systems, where he oversees marketing and
business development activities for Si-Ware’s three divisions ASIC Solutions – MEMS interface ASICs; Timing Products – all silicon oscillators; and Optical MEMS Technology – MOEMS products. Most recently, Scott was Vice President & General Manager for VTI Technologies, Inc. He also co-founded VTI’s timing device business, which is commercializing MEMS resonator and oscillator technology. Before joining VTI, Scott co-founded a MEMS resonator startup, Beat Semiconductor, and served as CEO. He saw the company through inception and initial IP development to acquisition by VTI Technologies. Scott’s prior roles include Director and Principal Analyst for iSuppli, and product marketing and sales positions at Epson Toyocom and Tektronix. Scott earned a BS in Electrical Engineering and an MBA from the University of Southern California.
A N A L Y S T C O R N E R
Inertial sensor market moves to combo sensors and sensor hubs At least in the inertial sensor market, MEMS development is starting to look less like one product, one process, than like one product in a common ecosystem.
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While market demands for lower cost, higher performance MEMS devices continue unchanged, the options for meeting these
demands are changing as the sector matures. As current process technology approaches its limits for easily reducing the size and cost of devices, integration, both in combination sensor hardware and sensor fusion software—is becoming the next technology driver. And that means lots of options for technologies, partnerships and business models to put all the parts together for competitive advantage.
Inertial sensor prices will continue to keep dropping, and though the rate of change is slowing, we expect strong competition and strong pressure from big customers to push the average selling prices down another 40% to 60% over the next fi ve years, with a three-axis accelerometer falling to around ~ $0.19, a three-axis gyro to ~$0.31 and a 3-axis magnetometer to ~$0.18 by 2018.
There’s still some room to reduce costs by reducing die size, but many of the easy gains have already been made, now that leading 3-axis components are all getting down to as small as from 1.4x1.4mm2 (magnetometers) to 2x2mm2 (gyros). Reducing the size of the bonding lines has been one major contributor. EVG reports that the typical area used by the bond was as much as 25%to 30% of the die back in 2009, while gold-gold bonding can now reduce that to as little as 5% with the same MEMS design. The issues of using gold in the cleanroom have kept most players except
for STMicroelectronics and XFab for using gold, but alternatives include even open technology platforms from InvenSense or Teledyne DALSA. Reducing bonding wire pad area by going to TSVs is another option, though that technology can also add costs. Other process technologies, from more precise etching to wafer-level packaging, will continue to bring reductions, but we’re probably getting close to the limit of how much more process technology can reduce die size and cost.
Consumer market volumes have also driven leading suppliers—and their equipment suppliers –to make big strides in highly controlled high volume production technology to raise yields and bring down costs as well, but most of the easy gains have probably already been made there as well for high volume producers.
This maturing of the production technology, potentially requiring some different approach to make the next stepwise improvement in cost and performance, could present a ripe opportunity for disruptive approaches. While launching a new technology at smart phone costs and volumes will be extremely challenging, CEA-Leti’s piezo resistive sensor platform discussed elsewhere in this issue looks like one promising alternative, especially if they can indeed include the magnetometer in the same process for 9 DoF on a single chip. Qualtré’s low- noise bulk acoustic wave gyro platform, now sampling, is another possibility to watch.
Integration becomes the next driver of cost and performance
But the big near term driver of lower cost and better performance is becoming integration – both of discrete sensors into combination modules, and of sensor data into high level functions. That’s requiring MEMS suppliers to step up their game and add new capabilities, but also opening opportunity for a variety of new technologies and new business models.
Integrating multiple sensors on the same die or in the same package with a shared a single ASIC, is a clear path forward to reducing cost. In the automotive area, for example, a discrete accelerometer and discrete gyroscope add up to ~$13 this year, while the equivalent combo sensor costs about $11, and we expect the cost of the combo sensor has more
16 M E M S ’ T r e n d s
Laurent Robin, Activity LeaderInertial MEMS Devices& Technologies, Yole Développement
Eric Mounier,Senior Analyst,MEMS Devices& Technologies,Yole Développement
0
500
1 000
1 500
2 000
2 500
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
$M
Consumer Auto
2010-2018 Inertial combos forecast(Source: Status of the MEMS Industry 2013 report, July 2013, Yole Développement)
room to fall, increasing this ~15% savings to a ~20% savings within the next fi ve years. Integration of more devices will also follow. In mobile phones we expect to see 6-axis combos become common next year, followed by 9-axis IMUs gaining traction in 2015, and then further integration with pressure sensors, MCUs, RF devices, and temperature and humidity sensors to come. While the lower costs of the combos and the simpler supply chain will drive demand, the risk from the limited number of suppliers so far still presents a hurdle to adoption, though this will improve with time.
Besides tighter integration of the sensor hardware, there is also of course strong demand for smarter management of the sensor data. Smaller MEMS devices in general with their smaller capacitance signals, and especially these combo sensors with added complexity as well, demand more complex signal processing, requiring more of the ICs. So even some of the big IDMs are turning to outside ASIC design companies with expertise to design
these complex combo die controllers. Bosch Sensortec is working with EM Microelectronics on some ASIC design, while STMicroelectronics has turned to ICSense.
Good sensor processing can also squeeze more performance out of existing inertial devices, as for example making a virtual gyro by combining a high performance accelerometer and magnetometer. A number of companies have been proposing such devices for some time, but more accurate sensors now mean that suppliers like Kionix and some software makers can offer performance good enough for some applications. While rotational accuracy is several degrees less than a real
gyro, the magnetic version can work for gesture recognition. Moreover, it costs less, and uses much less power, so it could be kept always on to provide context awareness.
Increasingly, too, the more complex sensor fusion is moving away from the sensors into a dedicated sensor hub. Major application processor suppliers are starting to add sensor hubs to their CPUs, moving sensor management from the operating system software into the silicon. And more application-specifi c dedicated commercial navigation chips (Broadcom) or application processors with integrated navigation (Qualcomm) for specifi c sensor fusion functions are also coming to market. Recent phones from both Samsung and Apple are now using sensor hubs to handle the motion processing for fi tness and other applications, and increasingly we expect these sensor hubs to provide indoor navigation and context awareness functions as well. Big software and systems makers are also getting into sensor management as well, with Apple’s sensor hub and Google and Microsoft’s efforts. It’s easy entry for them to do their own software.
All these different capabilities needed to make a smart combo sensor function-- MEMS devices, magnetometers, ASICs, packaging technology, sensor hub chips and software – means there’s a wide range of new MEMS business models possible, as companies select what component parts to best to make themselves, what best to buy outside to get quickly to market, and others fi nd opportunities in specializing in particular steps. Even the largest MEMS makers are opportunistically buying and selling everything from process platform technology and bare die to sensor fusion software or fi rmware on silicon.
We think that this fragmentation of the value chain is only a short term solution. In the long term, it remains a huge advantage to have control of all the key parts of value inside the company. Accordingly, we expect inertial sensor makers to continue to move to their own magnetometer technology.
Specialty niches offer opportunities too
While MEMS devices used to be primarily fi rst developed for industrial and automotive markets, the lure of mobile phone volumes today has startups –and their investors—all targeting the consumer market from the start. But many MEMS companies
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M E M S ’ T r e n d s 17M E M S ’ T r e n d s
“Integrating multiple sensors on the same die or in the same package with a shared a single ASIC, is a clear path forward to reducing cost”, commentsEric Mounier.
STMicroelectronics LSM330 6-Axis IMU.(Courtesy of System Plus Consulting)
MEMSAccelerometer
ASICAccelerometer
ASICGyroscope
MEMSGyroscope
“Increasingly, too, the more complex sensor fusion is moving away from the sensors into a dedicated sensor hub,” says Laurent Robin.
O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3 I S S U E N ° 1 6
are alive today because they also had parallel development for niche industrial markets, to establish their technology at a smaller scale fi rst. Consumer markets may be misleading people to neglect the opportunities beyond the mobile phone. Even devices that will ultimately have big consumer markets also usually have plenty of other niche applications that don’t demand such high volumes or low costs. For emerging MEMS autofocus devices, for example, there are applications besides just mobile phones, ranging from automotive back-up cameras to IR imaging for security monitoring. Scanning mirrors are similarly fi nding applications beyond consumer pico projectors, in medical imaging, 3D scanning, and many other applications.
Sensors and actuators that offer a stepped-up level of performance at accordingly somewhat higher cost are fi nding opportunities in new industrial applications, such as precision agriculture and autonomous industrial cleaning robots. These expanding markets for mid-performance sensors may be in the range of tens of thousands of units, certainly not consumer volumes, but bigger than for most high end specialty devices. The new piezo electric thin fi lm technology is being fi rst introduced into printheads for commercial and industrial printers, where we expect the technology to disrupt the market. Epson fi rst introduced the technology in its commercial large-format printers, and is now extending it across all its industrial and business printing equipment. Epson says the new piezo MEMS chip allows it scale the same print head technology from industrial presses for labels and packaging, down to offi ce desktop printers. STMicroelectronics is also developing a thin fi lm piezo print head for industrial printers as its fi rst thin fi lm piezo product.
www.yole.fr
18 M E M S ’ T r e n d s
Laurent Robin, Activity Leader, Inertial MEMS Devices & Technologies, Yole DéveloppementHe is in charge of the MEMS & Sensors market research. He previously worked at image sensor company e2v Technologies (Grenoble, France). He holds a Physics Engineering degree from the National Institute of Applied Sciences in Toulouse, plus a Master Degree in Technology & Innovation Management from EM Lyon Business School, France.
Dr. Eric Mounier, Senior Analyst, MEMS Devices & Technologies, Yole DéveloppementHe has a PhD in microelectronics from the INPG in Grenoble. Since 1998 he is a cofounder of Yole Développement, a market research company based in France. Dr. Eric Mounier is in charge of market analysis for MEMS, equipment and material. He is Chief Editor of Micronews and MEMS’Trends magazines (MEMS Technologies & Markets).
New Technologies for the Next-Generation
Inertial MEMS
Inertial MEMS Manufacturing
Inertial MEMS manufacturing
technical trends report
Technology and market report
Discover all our reports on www.i-micronews.com
KEY FEATURES:
• Inertial MEMS market update and wafer shipments
• Evolutions at the front-end and packaging levels
• Trends in inertial MEMS testing• Analysis of 20+ accelerometers,
gyroscopes, magnetometers and combo sensors
Publication date : December 201
C O M P A N Y I N S I G H T
MEMS equipment startup SolMateS aims at pulsed laser depositionof PZT thin fi lmPZT thin fi lms seem to be a hot topic at MEMS research labs these days, with their potential to improve the performance of many MEMS actuators, if a technology can be developed for low cost volume production. Dutch equipment startup SolMateS claims its pulsed laser deposition tool could be the enabler.
O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3 I S S U E N ° 1 6
PZT’s large force in response to an electric fi eld-- potentially some 10X the force of AlN—could fi nd application in the next generation of MEMS ink jet heads, RF devices, ultrasonic imagers, autofocus lenses, and microfl uidics. However, to date it’s been diffi cult to deposit quality PZT thin fi lms at high volume at low cost. The traditional bulk sol-gel spin-on PZT deposition takes multiple coat-bake-sinter iterations, so it can be time consuming and costly, and may be hard to control yields. Sputtering and other PVD/CVD processes have also been challenging. “PZT is diffi cult because there’s a very narrow window for the parameters for the active material, the composition must be very specifi c, and it’s a high temperature process,” explains SolMateS CEO Arjen Janssens, noting that different applications and different substrate and contact materials all have requirements of their own as well. Use of the new material in MEMS stacks also of course requires considering the impact of further steps of etching, cleaning and sputtering on the PZT fi lm.
Janssens argues that pulsed laser deposition—where the laser fl ash melts the target to create the plasma instead of the usual PVD ion processes--works better for complex materials. At the >10,000°C temperatures, everything in the target goes directly into a very stable and dense plasma to fl ood the substrate. That reportedly limits problems with differential rates of plasma deposition for different constituents of complex materials, and makes deposition less dependent on substrate characteristics. It also allows use of a smaller, wafer-sized targets. And since the deposition rate is controlled by the power of the laser, throughput can reportedly be increased by simply replacing the laser with a higher power one for more nanosecond pulses per second.
“ALD is like a mist, that slowly creates a layer of moisture coating the ground everywhere,” Janssens explains. “Sputtering is like rain, coming down in droplets that then pool together to cover the surface. PLD is like a sudden downpour, like a bucket of water emptied on a small spot. The water is together in the air before it hits the ground.”
The spin-off from the University of Twente in the Netherlands started out doing PLD of optical coatings, but found potential users were most interested in PZT. It raised $M3 funding from private venture investors in 2011 to turn its focus to developing volume production tools, hiring people from the semiconductor equipment sector. To date the startup has sold two tools to industrial research labs, one to Robert Bosch and the other to the Norwegian contract research organization SINTEF,
20 M E M S ’ T r e n d s
Arjen JanssensCEO, SolMateS
“PZT is diffi cult because there’s a very narrow window for
the parameters for the active material, the composition must be very specifi c, and it’s a high
temperature process,”explains Arjen Janssens, SolMateS.
PiezoFlare800. (Courtesy of SolMateS)
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which aims to develop piezo MEMS expertise and fab services. It’s also participating in the EU Lab4MEMS project led by STMicroelectronics, which is working on developing on high volume, low cost PZT thin fi lm deposition for MEMS.
“We expect to see a mainstream product on the market in a year, or at least three,” suggests Janssens, thought it may well be for an application other than MEMS. He says the company sees more demand for deposition on materials other than silicon, from things like microfl uidics on glass to speakers and microphones on titanium. The company is developing processes with users in the energy and lighting markets. These non-silicon applications may come to market fi rst, he suggests, since the producers may have less stringent production requirements for things like particulate count, and a less conservative lets-try-it-and-see attitude. Most interest so far has come from early adopters who see a market edge in a disruptive device enabled by the new technology, while the mainstream device makers, end users and fabs watch to see if and when the process proves itself stable in production lines. There’s also a wide range of other complex materials deposited by PLD in research labs that could potentially fi nd commercial applications.
“The industry has done a lot of work already to get sputtering deposition of PZT up and running and it’s been hard,” he notes. “PLD is just starting, so let’s see where we can go.”
www.piezofl are.com
Arjen Janssens, CEO, SolMateSArjen Janssens is responsible for the overall leadership and strategy of the company. He started his career as strategic consultant at Arthur D. Little, after one year he became shareholder and consultant of Quintel Management Consultancy (spin-out of Arthur D. Little). In 2004 he enrolled into his PhD. at the University of Twente focusing on Piezo materials and pulsed laser deposition. During his PhD. he assisted MESA+ in business development, completed the Executive MBA at TSM business school of technology, and co-founded SolMateS.
A report dedicated to applications, market and technological trends
Manufacturing
KEY FEATURES:
Publication date : November 2013
C O M P A N Y I N S I G H T
Sensirion targets multi-gas sensor platformSensirion says it has developed a metal oxide gas sensor platform that can identify multiple different gases, targeted at air quality monitoring and breath analysis in mobile phones.
O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3 I S S U E N ° 1 6
The platform can also learn to recognize gases and scents for other applications by pattern matching software. Co-CEO and co-
founder Moritz Lechner says the product is being considered for phones models coming in 2015.
While mobile electronics have added sensors for vision, hearing and touch, they haven’t yet managed to add the sense of smell. “The nose has a very demanding task,” says Lechner. “The deeper you get into it, the more you start to see how demanding it is to match a dog… An artifi cial nose is not realistic soon, and we don’t want to use that term because it is too associated with hype, but a gas sensor that can smell different gases is a fi rst step. When we talk to our customers, it’s what they want next.”
The Swiss supplier of industrial temperature and humidity sensors is developing a consumer gas sensing chip, based on the mature metal oxide technology commonly used in automotive and building climate and control systems. Metal oxide sensors are very sensitive, but like other compact gas sensors, have cross sensitivities. So Sensirion makes multiple pixels of different metal oxides, which react differently, and tests them with multiple different modes, by varying temperature and timing and other conditions, to generate a distinct signature pattern for each gas, to allow
identifi cation of multiple different gases with the same sensor system. This pattern generation also offers the intriguing potential for the platform to learn to recognize new scents or emitted gases, by storing the signature of the target in memory, and then checking for matches to that pattern. “The interesting part is that the software that can teach the sensor system to distinguish different things for new use cases with the same hardware and the same metal oxides,” notes Lechner.
The company has one key commercial component of a gas-sensing system already, with its existing CMOS-based temperature and humidity sensor now found in the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the Galaxy Note 3, since accounting for humidity and temperature are key issues in indentifying other gases. “Water vapor is the most frequent gas that disturbs gas measurements,” Lechner notes. Sensirion’s humidity sensor measures changes in capacitance as water vapor is absorbed by polymer fi lm on micro-machined fi ngers, integrated on the same chip with a temperature sensor and calibration and compensation algorithms. The gas sensor design will use this same CMOS concept.
Lechner expects the fi rst applications of the gas sensor to be for consumers to monitor gases like ozone, CO and VOCs in their environment, and concentrations of alcohol, bad odors, and potentially other health markers in their breath with their phones. The device can reportedly meet the needed power and size requirements for mobile applications, with current consumption for sampling once per minute reportedly averaging 0.2mA for the 2mm x 2mm sensor system.
The company aims to supply samples to the open market next summer, and ship products by the fi rst half of 2015, for smart phones coming the
22 M E M S ’ T r e n d s
“While mobile electronics have added sensors for vision,
hearing and touch, they haven’t yet managed to add the sense
of smell,” says Moritz Lechner, Sensirion.
Sensirion environment node. (Courtesy of Sensirion)
Felix Mayer& Moritz Lechner,Co-Founders & Co-CEOs,Sensirion
I S S U E N ° 1 6 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3
generation after next. “That means everyone has to get used to thinking about these applications now,” says Lechner. “It’s a big change for two years.”
Remaining challenges include integrating the sensor into the particular mobile device, with its specifi c local heating and cooling characteristics, as well as deciding whether to best put the higher levels of sensor processing in the ASIC or a separate processor in the phone.
“Gas sensors are very complex, a huge pain,” says Lechner, noting the complexities of gas exchange in real life, as well as the materials and the calibration and compensation. “But that means there are many opportunities to innovate.”
The 15 year old company employs ~500 making temperature and humidity sensors for controlling air conditioning systems and refrigerators, as well as automotive climate control, anti fogging, and engine optimization. It also makes MEMS fl ow sensors for gases and liquids.
www.sensirion.com
Felix Mayer, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Sensirion He researched at ETH Zurich in micro technology. He spent f ive years with Siemens, and is co-founder of Sensirion AG and co-CEO since 1998. He won many entrepreneurial awards. He studied physics at ETH Zurich, Ph.D. in micro technology.
Moritz Lechner, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, SensirionHe researched at ETH Zurich and the Paul Scherrer Institute in the fi elds of microelectronics and detector technology. He is the co-founder of Sensirion AG and co-CEO since 1998. He won numerous entrepreneurial awards during his career. He studied physics at ETH, Ph.D. at ETH Zurich.
Though MEMS standardization will never happen, companies are optimizing their own technology platforms. Such process innovations will drive MEMS equipment and materials to a 7% CAGR over 2012-2018.
MEMS Manufacturing MEMS Front-End Manufacturing Trends report
Technology and market report
Discover all our reports on www.i-micronews.com
KEY FEATURES:
• MEMS process adoption cycle• MEMS equipment & materials
forecast• MEMS manufacturing process
analysis: What’s new?• MEMS equipment & materials
market forecast 2012-2018• Detailed MEMS manufacturing
• MEMS manufacturing cost structure
• MEMS manufacturing strategy analysis
Publication date : February 2013
Sensirion smartphone nodes. (Courtesy of Sensirion)
C O M P A N Y I N S I G H T
CEA-Leti and Tronics see piezo-resistive platform as alternative to capacitive sensingAs it gets harder to make capacitance sensors ever smaller, Tronics Group is pioneering an alternative piezo-resistance technology from CEA-Leti that may have signifi cant potential to reduce sensor size and cost. Demonstration samples are slated for fi rst quarter next year.
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First target product is a consumer 6-axis accelerometer/gyrometer combo sensor on a single die in early 2015, to be followed shortly
by a full 9 DoF IMU device on a single <5mm2 die. “We’re targeting the consumer market fi rst because cost is the fi rst driver there, and size is the fi rst driver for that,” says Julien Bon, Tronics Business Unit Manager for Multisensor Technologies. He notes that a more sensitive piezo-resistive sensor technology can potentially reduce die size by about 30%, while also enabling the magnetometer to be easily integrated on the same die as the inertial sensors. And since the detection principle and fi rst analog readout circuit is the same for all nine axes in the device, the ASIC can also likely be simplifi ed, for further reductions in size and cost. The company is partnering with a tier one consumer MEMS supplier to the likes of Samsung and Apple, as well as with major ASIC suppliers and motion processing specialist MOVEA, particularly eying applications in augmented reality and pedestrian navigation. The development is supported by €6.5M funding from the French Ministry of Industry in the nanoelectronics program. “The fi rst generation is designed to about match the performance of other current competitors,” says Julien Bon. “Though it’s the 15th generation for them.”
Developers hope the technology will prove that this M&NEMs platform is a generic one allowing the development of a wide range of MEMS applications by many designers. “Unlike other manufacturing technologies for MEMS that are dedicated processes, dedicated readout circuits and dedicated packaging, this is a unique platform allowing designs of various MEMs,” explains Jean-René Lequepeys, CEA-Leti, VP Silicon Components Division. “We mainly come from the technology side and so haven’t put too much effort into optimizing the design itself, but we have no doubt that it is a very promising platform that offers huge room still for optimization and design of new kinds of MEMs, once people try and see what they can do with our design kit and design rules manual.” Leti itself has so far demonstrated a MEMS microphone and a pressure sensor made on the piezo-resistive platform. Julien Bon points out the potential for high performance inertial sensors as well, as the signal to noise ratio of the piezo resistive technology is theoretically better than that of capacitance, and a lot of the tiny nanowire gauges could be put around the proof mass to compensate for the parasitics. Leti has licensed the technology on a non-exclusive but preferred basis to Tronics, and is in discussions with several other players.
A standard technology platform for MEMS could also offer opportunities to reduce overall costs as well. “It’s a very big advantage to have only one technology to make every kind of MEMS to fi ll the fab, and means simplifi cation all along the supply chain,” says René Lequepeys. “One manufacturing line, one chip to package, one detection block, one supplier for all parts. It’s diffi cult to quantify, but if it’s simpler it should also be cheaper.”
Key to the technology is using a thick (>10μm) layer for the mass for sensing, and a very thin (<500nm) layer for piezo–resistive gauges around its edges. As the delicately balanced proof mass responds to movement in the x, y and z directions with small angle defl ections, it compresses or tenses the nanowire-like sensors around it, changing their resistance. Both in-plane and out-of-plane
24 M E M S ’ T r e n d s
Julien Bon, Business Unit Manager for Multisensor Technologies,Tronics microsystems
Nanowire. (Courtesy of Tronics microsystems)
Jean-René Lequepeys, VP Silicon Components Division, CEA-Leti
“The fi rst generation is designed to
about match the performance of
other current competitors,” says Julien Bon,
Tronics microsystems.
I S S U E N ° 1 6 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3
detection are done with the same silicon layer and gauges, so all accelerometer and gyroscope axes can be compactly made on the same die. The magnetometer consists of a permanent magnetic layer on top of the mobile mass of the accelerometer, enabling all three axes of compass movements also to be measured in the same way as any other motion from the structures.
The small cross section of nano wire gauge concentrates the forces over a small area, and the lever effect on its suspended beam amplifi es them further to enhance the signal. “There’s no bending to stress the tiny beam,” notes Julien Bon. “Only compression and expansion.” While the nanoscale gauge is small for MEMS, its dimensions are large for CMOS and readily manufactured with conventional processes. Tronics is applying its wafer-level packaging technology to the devices, for the tricky challenge of vacuum for the gyro but atmospheric packaging for the accelerometer. Development is on Tronics’ 6-inch line, and the company is looking for a partner for high volume 8-inch manufacturing.
Measuring compass direction by the highly sensitive piezo-resistive detection of the movement of the magnetometer also reportedly uses much less
power than other types of devices. This means the magnetometer can be turned on to take readings more frequently, to potentially average the data across this more frequent sampling to improve accuracy. “We’re sure that power consumption is a limitation today, and software makers will fi gure out how to take advantage of the magnetometer being 100X faster, perhaps to better correct the gyro and improve sensor fusion,” says Julien Bon.
www-leti.cea.frwww.tronicsgroup.com
Julien Bon, Business Unit Manager, Tronics microsystemsJulien holds a M.Sc. in Microelectronics from Polytechnic National Institute of Grenoble, France. He joined Tronics in 2001, after a fi rst experience with Smart Cards test development at STMicroelectronics. In the fi rst years as a Test & Product engineer; he worked on a variety of sensors (accelerometers, gyroscopes, pressure sensors, micro-pumps...). Then, he became Head of Engineering & Product Industrialization and lead various MEMS developments. Julien is now managing the Multi-Sensor Technologies Business Unit. Jean-René Lequepeys, VP Silicon Components Division, CEA-Leti Jean-René Lèquepeys is the Head of the Silicon Components Division at CEA-Leti since 2011. This division is involved in 3 main areas: micro and nanoelectronics, micro and nanosystems, and 3D stacking. Jean-René Lèquepeys graduated in Electrical Engineering from Supelec in 1983. He was the Program Manager of Telecom and Smart devices at CEA-Leti from 1998 to 2004. From 2005 to 2010, he was the Head of the Chip Architecture and IC Design Division at CEA-Leti. In 2000, Jean-René was the winner of the “Grand Prix de l’Electronique Général Férrié” prize for his work in the fi eld of spread spectrum and CDMA radio-communications.
C O M P A N Y I N S I G H T
Smaller, more complex MEMS structures drive demand for new etch capabilitiesAs MEMS chips become smaller, more complex, and more diverse, producers demand better control of feature profi les and tilt in high volume manufacturing.
O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3 I S S U E N ° 1 6
Diverse fi lm stacks and new materials in emerging products may also need a wider variety of etch technologies. That’s driving
both continued improvement in the 20-year-old Bosch DRIE process, and wider adoption of alternative, vapor-phase release etch technology, say executives at etch equipment supplier SPTS.
“The European fabs and Asian foundries doing big consumer volumes are driving us to develop these equipment processes,” says Dave Thomas, SPTS director of marketing for etch products, noting that products like complex combo sensors with multiple functionalities on a single chip are demanding better control of profi le variation and tilt of etched sidewalls to improve both device performance and production yields. These volumes now do make it more worthwhile for equipment suppliers to invest in specialty processes for MEMS, for what’s still only about a $100 million annual market for DRIE tools.
One key to keeping sidewalls more perfectly vertical turns out to be better removal of the polymer between DRIE cyles. “Though it is often overlooked, the removal of the polymer at the bottom of the feature is actually the most critical step in
controlling the accuracy of the following deposition and etch steps,” says Thomas. So SPTS has added a second plasma source and gas inlet to better cover the wafer with a uniform plasma all the way to the edge. This can reportedly improve profi le variation in ~20:1 aspect-ratio features from 0.3°- 0.2° down to 0.1°or less, with no detectable bowing.
At small sizes inertial sensors become very subject to tilt nuances, as imperfect trenches give readings that falsely look like movement when there is none. “Before, designers could tune out tilted features, but now the process needs to manage it. The dual source also improves tilt by as much as 10x,” claims Thomas, citing results of tilt of .2° with the single source improving to 0.02° with the dual source. SPTS also added a system for measuring the tilt that’s too small to easily see on an SEM cross section, by etching through a test wafer and checking the alignment on the backside, to check hardware performance.
Big unit volumes of small MEMS die may next propel changes on the assembly side to increase throughput of handling all those units. With conventional dicing of the very small 1mm2 die now taking as much as 7-8 hours per wafer, one alternative coming may be plasma dicing. SPTS has demonstrated that the dry etch process can do the same dicing with cleaner edges in only 15-20 minutes, says Thomas.
Are these consumer volumes across a growing portfolio of products approaching a point where investment in 300mm facilities starts to makes sense? “I think 300mm MEMS is just around the corner,” suggests Thomas. “One of the aggressive players used to running 300mm fabs will move in and blow the competitors out of the water on cost…That could be only one to two years away.” The issue of course is if demand will be there to sell all those die for a return on the fab investment.
New microphones, RF, and piezo devices may use vapor release etch
Smaller gaps and complex geometries are also moving some MEMS makers to vapor etch release for controlled removal of sacrifi cial material
26 M E M S ’ T r e n d s
Paul Hammond, Senior Director and General Manager,Release Etch Products,SPTS Technologies
Dr. Dave Thomas,Marketing Director, Etch Products, SPTS Technologies
Rapier DRIE tool. (Courtesy of SPTS Technologies)
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I S S U E N ° 1 6 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3
M E M S ’ T r e n d s
without stiction. Most vapor etch so far has used HF for etching SiO2 with high selectivity, but microphones, RF switches, and actuators with stacks with SiN and PZT, may at last drive more demand for XeF2’s selective etching of silicon. “Over the last ten years Xactix sold 120 of its XeF2 etching tools, primarily to research labs, but the technology has been slow to move into production, with only some 15 production tools sold to date. We think that’s about to change,” reports Paul Hammond, SPTS manager of release etch, noting SPTS’ acquisition of Xactix in June.
HF vapor etch has been the go-to solution to eliminate stiction from wet etching. “The smaller gaps needed for increased performance in inertial sensors mean users absolutely need vapor phase etching,” says Hammond, noting that SPTS now has nearly 40 25-wafer HF chambers in production to lead the vapor etch market. SPTS acquired HF etch supplier Primaxx in 2011.
Microphones are likely the next application to move to more vapor etching, where Hammond says SPTS is engaged with HF etch in some way with a number of key players. Some microphone makers are also using XeF2 or both chemistries, depending on which better etches the materials in their particular wafer stack. XeF2 can be the best solution for a particular stack, and is in high volume production by at least one customer, even if it does require protecting the structural silicon from the etchant.
RF switches, piezoelectric MEMS and microbolometers may also all increasingly need vapor release etch, suggests Hammond. The RF switch market is at last poised for growth. Some resonators currently use HF for their small gaps and complex designs, and more resonator solutions coming with moving metal elements in stacks with dielectrics like SiN may be best released with XeF2. The growing interest in piezo electric thin fi lms for MEMS may
also drive demand for XeF2 release, as the PZT may be attacked by HF, and the low pressure XeF2 process is well suited for long undercuts needed to make piezo actuators such as pumps for liquids. Some high performance microbolometers, such as those that researchers at Stanford and their corporate sponsors are developing, may also need XeF2 to etch their complex metal diaphragms isolated by dielectrics. MEMS integrated inside CMOS also likely need vapor release processes for etching through tiny holes within the CMOS.
www.spts.com
Dr. Dave Thomas, Marketing Director, Etch Products, SPTS TechnologiesHe is responsible for SPTS’s etch product line, including all aspects of marketing, product positioning and the provision of support to the worldwide sales team. After completing his BSc in Chemistry in 1983 at Leeds University, he went on to the University of Bristol, where he obtained an MSc in Surface Chemistry and, a Ph.D. in Plasma Etching & Deposition. Dr. Thomas worked for Philips Components on silicon wafer processing, and Nortel Networks as a Principal Research Engineer in various areas of designing, manufacturing and testing of laser diodes. He joined SPTS in 1994 as a process engineer in physical vapour deposition (PVD) before becoming PVD technology manager, Japan in 1996. He took up his fi rst marketing position as product marketing manager for etch products in 1997 and subsequently promoted to Marketing Director for etch products in 2008. He has also authored over 30 technical articles and papers.
Paul Hammond, Senior Director and General Manager, Release Etch Products, SPTS TechnologiesPaul Hammond has led the Etch Release Product Group of SPTS Technologies (formerly Primaxx Inc., and XACTIX, Inc.) since 2005 after joining the company as VP Sales and Marketing in 2002. Prior to SPTS, Paul was President of American Tech Manufacturing Corp. from 1995 to 2002; ATM designs, manufactures, and markets high-speed IC inspection and conditioning equipment. Before that, Paul was Director of Sales and Marketing of Sono-Tek Corporation. Paul started his career in the industry with Cambridge Instruments Group where he held a number of positions including Business Unit Manager for the Crystal Growth and MOCVD division. Educated in the United Kingdom, Paul graduated with a BS in Applied Physics from Brunel University in London.
“I think 300mm MEMS is just around the corner,” suggests Dave Thomas, SPTS.
CMOS MEMS Compass released using SPTS Vapor HF Technology.
(Courtesy Baolab Microsystems)
Released MEMS wafer ready for Al sputter sealing over etch release holes.(Courtesy Baolab Microsystems)
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28 M E M S ’ T r e n d s
E V E N T R E V I E W
On October 10 in Brussels’ ENIAC building, the inaugural COWIN Investment event assembled 70+ innovation stakeholders
representing research, industry, entrepreneurs, and public and private funders active in smart systems. 10 companies that benefi tted from COWIN’s support in the defi nition and implementation of their growth strategy presented their strategic positioning and development plan to 15 pan-European private investors, all members of COWIN’s network. These 15 venture capitalists represent more than 3B€ in managed funds.
More than 80 one-on-one meetings took place during the event’s networking session. According to Paul Thurk, Managing Director Europe at Arch Ventures, “the COWIN Investment place 2013 was a great event presenting interesting companies active in ICT hardware. Europe has vast and important research in the physical sciences, but too often the VC community focuses on software, internet and other areas that are perceived to require lower investment levels. Such a focus risks missing some really great and signifi cant opportunities. The organization of the COWIN Investment place is a great step toward counteracting this trend.”
Here’s a look at the selected companies:
The 10 selected companies represent the potential of innovative smart systems technologies. The companies’ activities cover various application fi elds including Mobile, Industrial, Environmental, Medical Devices, Diagnostics and Security. Based on the exploitation of EU research projects results, each company has developed a unique value proposition and an attractive competitive positioning. They all benefi t from COWIN support and although most of them are early stage companies, they are all generating sales and setting-up strategic partnerships to support their growth.
VCs were impressed with the high quality of the companies pitching at the COWIN Investment event. According to Marc Lambrechts of Capricorn Venture Partners, “many events dedicated to introduce companies to VCs are organized in Europe, but COWIN brings a key differentiation with a very good selection of companies, very well prepared and with a focused offer and positioning.” The effi ciency of the event’s organization was also largely appreciated for its ability to facilitate networking and interactions. It’s very likely that in the coming months, the fruitful contacts and discussions which occurred will result in new strategic collaborations and investments.
Smart systems raise interest from European private investors COWIN successfully turns EU research projects into attractive business opportunities that support the growth and launch of start-up companies.
Company Activity
Atlas Neuroengineering(Belgium)
Atlas develops and commercialises experimental neuroscience tools that record and stimulate neuronal activity. Atlas’s implantable devices are used to investigate brain diseases and disorders.
Atten2(Spain)
Atten2 develops, manufactures and sells optical online sensors for fl uid monitoring. The main value proposition of Atten2’s products is the reduction of maintenance and replacement costs. Atten2 also performs related services.
DelfMEMS(France)
DelfMEMS develops and commercializes radio frequency micro-electromechanical systems. Next-generation mobile manufacturers will increasingly rely on tunable, low-loss components to deliver high-performance, multi-standard and multi-mode devices at a reasonable cost.
Excelera(Spain)
Excelera eases the integration of sensor systems in all kinds of devices and markets. Excelera’s products simplify sensor systems design and boost performance while reducing costs and time-to-market.
frec|n|sys(France)
frec|n|sys is a contract manufacturer of remote, battery-less sensors for harsh environments.
Holografi ka(Hungary)
Holografi ka wants to reshape the 3D industry. The company’s HoloVizio is the only 3D display system that simultaneously fulfi lls all criteria of true 3D display.
IvD company(Germany)
lvD platfor produces a complete diagnostics system for laboratory-like analysis in near-patient testing.
Multiphoton Optics (Germany)
Multiphoton Optics (MPO) offers its Two-Photon Absorption technology for optical component packaging and other markets.
Percipio Robotics(France)
Percipio Robotics offers extreme robotic micromanipulation to perform mass-production of assembled miniaturized products in high-technology applications.
TazTag(France)
TazTag provides system integrators, solution providers and corporations with B2B Secure Mobile products.
About COWINLaunched in 2010 under the 7th Framework Program, COWIN is a support action dedicated to strengthening European competitiveness in miniaturized smart systems. The initiative is focused on the commercial exploitation of advanced technologies developed in the framework of European collaborative research projects. COWIN’s mission is to facilitate take-up of those advanced technologies worthy of investment, in order to capture innovation, win new markets and make a profit. COWIN supports the launch and growth of innovative companies. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
More information:www.cowin4u.euContact:Géraldine Andrieux-Gustin [email protected]
Supported by:
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I S S U E N ° 1 6 O C T O B E R 2 0 1 3
M E M S ’ T r e n d s
As summarized by Khalil Rouhana, Director of Components and Systems for the DG Connect European Commission, COWIN aims at bringing a new dimension in supporting commercial exploitation of EU research project results. The added-value of this initiative coordinated and driven by Mrs Géraldine Andrieux Gustin from Yole Finance relies on the unique expertise of the team combining technical and market expertise, business development competencies and access to fi nance.
The COWIN partners, consisting of Yole Développement, Euripides, VDI-VDE/IT, Zabala Innovation Consulting and TBP have built an attractive ecosystem combining research centers, industrials, public and private investors with a focus on ICT hardware and smart systems. COWIN also contributes by structuring a relevant value chain for ICT hardware.
COWIN’s ecosystem, combined with its members’ expertise, is a powerful tool for supporting European innovation and entrepreneurship while exploiting EU research results to generate value and employment. COWIN’s experts work daily with technology companies and entrepreneurs to refi ne their business case into a pragmatic approach. COWIN is indeed operations-driven, facilitating interactions and collaborations with strategic partners across Europe. Luis Boada, Sales & Marketing with Excelera, said “COWIN excels at providing young companies with access to leading European companies. It’s a unique and great opportunity offered to young companies.”
COWIN’s goal is to blend the Silicon Valley’s spirit and effi ciency in focusing on the specifi c smart systems and ICT hardware thematic. As stated by Jean-Luc Mate, Vice President at Continental Automotive France and President of EURIPIDES², the EUREKA cluster for smart systems, “Joseph Schumpeter, an Austrian, defi ned the concept of the innovator-entrepreneur in the ‘50s. Europeans are fascinated by the capacity of Americans to transform ideas into profi table businesses. COWIN is the fi rst
EC-launched initiative to demonstrate that this transformation could be possible anywhere, as long as we contribute the same technical ideas, market applications and investment to make it happen. My dream is that COWIN will become a stable best practice process within Europe. Like Americans, Europeans also love to dream -- this time we just need to keep our eyes open”.
COWIN is a first step towards supporting entrepreneurship and the growth of innovative companies. New instruments designed by the European Commission for Horizon 2020, the new European framework programme for Research and Innovation, will increase the support provided to innovative SMEs. During the COWIN Investment place, Bernd Reichert, Head of unit at DG Research and Innovation presented the scheme of the SME instruments, which is based on three main phases spanning proof of concept to commercialization. Through this scheme, selected companies could raise up to 3M€ in grants, based on the quality of their business plan and development strategy. A total of 400M€ will be dedicated to the ICT fi eld.
ICT hardware is a strategic fi eld for European competitiveness, but it requires dedicated support to ensure company growth. Europe has the assets to fuel its economic dynamism with smart innovation: world-class research centers, top players in the microelectronics industry, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists active in ICT hardware. According to a Yole Développement analysis, the smart systems market opportunity is real, with an expected CAGR of 13% to 20% depending on market segment.
The growth is achievable, the European Commission is supportive, so let’s make it happen. In simulating the Silicon Valley’s spirit in Europe, COWIN-like activities can be the major breakthrough that turns European Commission investments into business successes that generate growth and employment.
www.cowin4u.eu
Networking time during the COWIN Investment place on October 10th,in Bruxelles (Courtesy of COWIN)
The world’s Largest Exhibition Focusing on Micro/MEMS and Nanotechnologies
Exhibition on Next-Generation Service Robot Manufacturing Technologies
With the concurrent fair:
“OPIE ( OPTICS & PHOTONICS International Exhibition)”Nano Micro Biz / ROBOTECH offers increased
opportunities to lead your business to the next stage!
23 – 25 April 2014Pacifico Yokohama
Concurrent fair
For more information
www.micromachine.jp/enCalling for Exhibitors now!
Sponsor : Micromachine Center
Co-sponsor : NMEMS Technology Research Organization
Organiser : Mesago Messe Frankfurt Corporation
Mesago Mese Frankfurt Corporation
Nano Micro Biz / ROBOTECH Organiser’s Office
Shosankan 7F 1-3-2 Iidabashi Chiyoda-ku Tokyo 102-0072, Japan
Tel . +81-3-3262-8446
Fax. +81-3-3262-8456
Email. [email protected]
Editorial StaffBoard Members: Jean-Christophe Eloy – Editor in Chief: Dr Eric Mounier - Editors: FrédéricBreussin, Paul Danini, Wenbin Ding, Jean-Christophe Eloy, Dr Eric Mounier, Laurent Robin,Benjamin Roussel, Paula Doe, Kathy Liszewski – Media & Communication Manager: Sandrine Leroy – Media & Communication Coordinator: Clotilde Fabre - Production: atelier JBBOX
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M E M S ’ T r e n d s
About Yole Développement
CONTACTS
Founded in 1998, Yole Développement has grown to become a group of companies providing marketing, technology and strategy consulting, media in addition to corporate fi nance services.With a strong focus on emerging applications using silicon and/or micro manufacturing, Yole Développement group has expanded to include more than 50 associates worldwide covering MEMS, Compound Semiconductors, LED, Image Sensors, Optoelectronics, Microfl uidics & Medical, Photovoltaics, Advanced Packaging, Nanomaterials and Power Electronics. The group supports industrial companies, investors and R&D organizations worldwide to help them understand markets and follow technology trends to develop their business.
CONSULTING• Market data, market research & marketing analysis• Technology analysis• Reverse engineering & costing services• Strategy consulting• Patent analysisMore information on www.yole.fr
For more information about :• Consulting Services: Christophe Fitamant (fi [email protected])• Financial Services: Géraldine Andrieux-Gustin ([email protected])• Reports: David Jourdan ([email protected]) • Media & Communication: Sandrine Leroy ([email protected])
MEDIA• Online disruptive technologies website: www.i-micronews.com• Editorial webcasts program• Five magazines: Micronews - MEMS Trends – 3D Packaging – iLED –
Power Dev' • Communication & Webcasts services
REPORTS• Collection of technology & market reports• Manufacturing cost simulation tools• Component reverse engineering & costing analysis• Patent analysis
FINANCIAL SERVICES• Mergers & Acquisitions• Due diligence• Fundraising• Coaching of emerging companies• IP portfolio management & optimizationMore information on www.yolefi nance.com
MEMS market will double over the next 6 years, pushing manufacturersto consider consumer applications in their strategies.
MEMS Markets Status of the MEMS Industry 2013 report
Technology and market report
Discover all our reports on www.i-micronews.com
KEY FEATURES:
• Understanding of the MEMS markets & players strategies
• MEMS market trends, business and technology evolution
• ASIC MEMS analysis• Financial trends analysis• MEMS manufacturing challenges Publication date : July 2013
