09/20/2011 

MEMS vendors comprise MNC and MEMS-centric and small-portfolio companies. The market will grow as tablet/smartphone adoption increases, and MEMS makers co-opt the economies of scale that other semiconductor segments have used to reach maturity, according to ABI Research.

09/19/2011 

IHS iSuppli's Richard Dixon looks at the market for automotive MEMS sensors over the next few years: which technologies and regions are driving growth, who are the top auto MEMS firms today and the up-and-comers, and how China is emerging as a market driver and supplier base.

09/16/2011 

Sensors have the potential to do everything from monitor airplane fuselages for cracks to improve wrist rotation in prostetic arms. Student researchers describe their sensor development work in video blogs from TECHCON 2011.

09/15/2011 

Alphabet Energy Inc. closed its Series A funding round with $12 million, led by TPG Biotech, the venture arm of TPG. Alphabet Energy's prototype device converts waste heat to electricity. The silicon device leverages MEMS/semiconductor manufacturing technologies.

09/14/2011 

MIT researchers have constructed a piezo-MEMS energy harvester using a bridge design rather than a cantilever. The bridge allows a wider frequency range to generate electricity, and keeps the piezoelectric material to a single layer.

09/14/2011 

MicroVision Inc. (Nasdaq: MVIS) secured a committed equity financing facility, wherein it can sell Azimuth Opportunity Ltd. up to $35 million of its shares of common stock over a 24-month period.

09/12/2011 

Silicon magnetic sensors are riding an upswing in automotive production and the expansion in tablet/smartphone adoption to 23.7% revenue growth in 2011, according to IHS iSuppli. This amounts to $1.46 billion in revenue.

09/12/2011 

Turkey's Roketsan Missiles Industries Inc. ordered Goodrich (NYSE:GR) SiIMU02 inertial measurement units (IMU) for precision guidance tasks on Roketsan's new CIRIT 70mm laser-guided missile for attack helicopters.

09/08/2011 

Jérémie Bouchaud, IHS, reports on motion sensing MEMS growth through 2015, including new motion sensors to be integrated into smartphones and tablets. These devices are driving a sales boom for MEMS sensors.

08/31/2011 

CellGuide selected Baolab's 3D NanoCompass IC technology as a companion to its location and positioning products, fully integrating GPS and compass functionalities in the CLIOX-C. The nanoscale MEMS manufacturing technique used for the NanoCompass supports high-volume, space-constrained applications.

08/25/2011 

Magnetic sensors will exceed $3.2 billion in sales by 2017 driven largely by "E-compassing" applications, according to Global Industry Analysts. Unique end-use applications, along with technology innovations, interoperability with devices and competitive pricing, will fuel "robust" magnetic sensors growth.

08/16/2011 

At the Swiss EPFL Integrated Actuactors Laboratory, researchers have constructed an electromagnetic three-phase motor on silicon that could make watches 3x more efficient and add other applications to time keeping.

08/11/2011 

The CES, annual consumer electronics show, will feature for the first time a MEMS TechZone and MEMS conference program at CES 2012.

06/15/2011 

A major consolidation is coming to the industrial MEMS market in the next 12-18 months, predicts Frankfurt Partners. The industrial MEMS market is both highly attractive and highly fragmented.

06/15/2011 

 In 2016, about 150 million systems will be installed in vehicles, containing over 830 million MEMS chips, says ABI Research. The growth is thanks to more MEMS in each safety or performance device, as well as government and consumer demand for new cars with integrated safety features.

06/03/2011 

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (CNST) has improved atomic force microscopy (AFM) by replacing the microscope's optical instrumentation with a nanomechanical cantilever probe and nanophotonic interferometer on a chip.

05/31/2011 

Micro-cantilevers can measure lipid bilayers interactions with surfactants with a new level of sensitivity, say Rice University researcher Sibani Lisa Biswal and Kai-Wei Liu, a graduate student. Applications range from better detergents to buckyball/cell interaction research, to investigations of how viruses penetrate cells.

05/26/2011 

The sensors industry will be worth $91.5 billion in five years, according to BCC Research. While the largest segment -- image, flow and level sensors -- will see 8.5% CAGR, biosensors and chemical sensors will see the fastest market growth at 9.6% CAGR.

05/23/2011 

The MEMS Industry Group (MIG) is organizing the inaugural "MEMS in the Machine" DemoZone at SEMICON West, sharing compelling examples of MEMS in action.

05/17/2011 

Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology Professor Adrian Bachtold and his research group created resonators from nanoscale graphene and carbon nanotubes (CNT) that exhibit nonlinear damping. This result could lead to supersensitive detectors of force or mass.