Category Archives: Applications

Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ:QCOM) and its subsidiary Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and Himax Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:HIMX), today jointly announced a collaboration to accelerate the development and commercialization of a high resolution, low power active 3D depth sensing camera system to enable computer vision capabilities for use cases such as biometric face authentication, 3D reconstruction, and scene perception for mobile, IoT, surveillance, automotive and AR/VR.

The collaboration brings together Qualcomm Spectra™ technologies and expertise in computer vision architecture and algorithm with Himax’s complementary technologies in wafer optics, sensing, driver, and module integration capabilities to deliver a fully integrated SLiM (Structured Light Module) 3D solution. The SLiM is a turn-key 3D camera module that delivers real-time depth sensing and 3D point cloud generation with high resolution and high accuracy performance for indoor and outdoor environments. The SLiM is engineered for very low power consumption in a compact, low profile form factor, making the solution ideal for embedded and mobile device integration. Qualcomm Technologies and Himax will commercialize the SLiM 3D camera as a total camera system solution for a wide array of markets and industries with mass production targeting in Q1/2018.

“This partnership with Himax highlights the technology investments we are making with Taiwanese companies to continue leading in visual processing innovation,” said Jim Cathey, senior vice president and president, Asia Pacific and India, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “The combination of cutting edge technology licensing and collaboration with an industry leading Taiwanese partner like Himax will help create groundbreaking new products in Taiwan, strengthening the global 3D depth sensing ecosystem and boosting Taiwan’s economy.”

“As an engineer, it is gratifying to see how our technology inventions enable products that will enrich user experience for consumers around the world,” said Chienchung Chang, vice president of engineering, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “It has been a great experience collaborating with Himax on the project to enable 3D computer vision technologies in smartphones, virtual reality and augmented reality products.”

“Our 3D sensing solution will be a game changing technology for smartphones, where we will enable the Android ecosystem to provide the next generation of mobile user experience,” said Jordan Wu, President and Chief Executive Officer of Himax Technologies. “Our two companies have worked together for more than four years to design the SLiM 3D sensing solution to meet growing demands for enhanced computer vision capabilities that will enable amazing new features and use cases in a broad range of markets and applications. We are pleased to partner with Qualcomm Technologies to put together an ecosystem and to enable the revolutionary computer vision solutions for our customers globally in a timely fashion.”

Imagine repeatedly lifting 165 times your weight without breaking a sweat — a feat normally reserved for heroes like Spider-Man.

Rutgers University-New Brunswick engineers have discovered a simple, economical way to make a nano-sized device that can match the friendly neighborhood Avenger, on a much smaller scale. Their creation weighs 1.6 milligrams (about as much as five poppy seeds) and can lift 265 milligrams (the weight of about 825 poppy seeds) hundreds of times in a row.

Its strength comes from a process of inserting and removing ions between very thin sheets of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), an inorganic crystalline mineral compound. It’s a new type of actuator – devices that work like muscles and convert electrical energy to mechanical energy.

The Rutgers discovery — elegantly called an “inverted-series-connected (ISC) biomorph actuation device” — is described in a study published online today in the journal Nature.

“We found that by applying a small amount of voltage, the device can lift something that’s far heavier than itself,” said Manish Chhowalla, professor and associate chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering. “This is an important finding in the field of electrochemical actuators. The simple restacking of atomically thin sheets of metallic MoS2 leads to actuators that can withstand stresses and strains comparable to or greater than other actuator materials.”

Actuators are used in a wide variety of electromechanical systems and in robotics. They have applications such as steerable catheters, aircraft wings that adapt to changing conditions and wind turbines that reduce drag, the study notes.

The discovery at Rutgers University-New Brunswick was made by Muharrem Acerce, study lead author and a doctoral student in Chhowalla’s group, with help from E. Koray Akdo?an, teaching assistant professor in Department of Materials Science and Engineering, said Chhowalla, senior author of the study.

Molybdenum disulfide — a naturally occurring mineral — is commonly used as a solid-state lubricant in engines, according to Chhowalla, who also directs the Rutgers Institute for Advanced Materials, Devices and Nanotechnology. It’s a layered material like graphite, with strong chemical bonding within thin layers but weak bonding between the layers. Thus, individual layers of MoS2 can be easily separated into individual thin sheets via chemistry.

The extremely thin sheets, also called nanosheets, remain suspended in solvents such as water. The nanosheets can be assembled into stacks by putting the solution onto a flexible material and allowing the solvent to evaporate. The restacked sheets can then be used as electrodes — similar to those in batteries – with high electrical conductivity to insert and remove ions. Inserting and removing ions leads to the expansion and contraction of nanosheets, resulting in force on the surface. This force triggers the movement — or actuation — of the flexible material.

Chhowalla and his group members found that their MoS2-based electrochemical device has mechanical properties such as stress, strain and work capacity that are extraordinary considering the electrodes are made by simply stacking weakly interacting nanosheets.

“The next step is to scale up and try to make actuators that can move bigger things,” Chhowalla said.

SEMI, with its Strategic Association partner MEMS & Sensors Industry Group (MSIG), today announced its shortlist of competitors for the Technology Showcase, which will take place on September 21 at the SEMI European MEMS & Sensors Summit 2017 in Grenoble. Selected by a committee of industry experts, five finalist companies will demonstrate advancements in MEMS and sensors for markets that span Internet of Things (IoT), consumer electronics, robotics and biomedical. The audience will vote for a winner, which will be announced at the Summit’s conclusion.

“We congratulate the finalists of the Technology Showcase, an event where attendees experience some of the newest and most fascinating MEMS and sensors technology in an interactive setting,” said Laith Altimime, president, SEMI Europe. “While this is SEMI’s first Technology Showcase at our European MEMS & Sensors Summit, this excellent group of contenders should make it an audience favorite.”

Technology Showcase finalists include:

Bosch Sensortec GmbH: BML050 — a high-precision MEMS scanner for interactive laser projection applications, which offers a virtual user interface solution for IoT applications such as home appliances, tablets and social robots.

Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems: Integrated Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers (CMUTs) — provides miniaturized, highly sensitive, low-power, and customer-specific sensors and sensor nodes for applications in liquid and gases. Applications include human-machine interaction, robotics, biomedical, and smart consumer systems.

Hap2U: Ultrasonic Piezoelectric Actuators for Smart Touchscreen Applications — gives users the sensation of feeling sliders, knobs and buttons while touching their display. Hap2U’s new approach to haptic feedback drastically reduces applied power and power consumption.

Philips Innovation Services: CMUTs for Ultrasound and Non-Ultrasound Devices — complements conventional technology with advantages such as large bandwidth, easy fabrication of large arrays, and monolithic integration of ASIC functionality. Through Philips MEMS Foundry, CMUTs are available for medium- and high-volume manufacturing.

Si-Ware Systems: NeoSpectra MEMS Spectral Sensors —features an FT-IR spectrometer on MEMS die. NeoSpectra MEMS Spectral Sensors enable tiny low-cost spectral sensors that are highly integrated, scalable and reliable, making them ideal for in-field and inline applications in various industries, including consumer electronics.

The Technology Showcase at SEMI European MEMS & Sensors Summit (September 20-22, 2017) will take place from 11:00 am-12:00 pm on September 21 at the MINATEC innovation campus at 3 parvis Louis Néel, Grenoble, France.

Despite its age and maturity, the automotive market has witnessed many unexpected developments over the past two years. And as has always been the case, safety drives the market. Automotive OEMs and suppliers are now investing in technologies to develop autonomous and electric vehicles. Automation will spur the development of imaging and detection sensors like cameras, LiDAR, and radar, while electrification will boost the design of current and thermal sensors for battery management. And because sensors are becoming a must-have, other markets are dynamic and growing too.

Yole Développement (Yole), part of Yole Group of Companies, presents an overview of the different sensors involved in autonomous systems with its new report MEMS & Sensors for Automotive. It also describes the applications, technologies and players associated with the automotive sensors market’s impending changes. This analysis includes detailed roadmaps and market forecasts until 2022.

How will sensor technology shape the tomorrow’s automotive industry? Yole’s analysts propose you today a deep understanding of the reborn automotive sensor market.

In a global automotive market worth than US$2.3 trillion, the little world of automotive sensors has recently been shaken up by the emergence of electric and autonomous cars.

Despite just 3% growth in the volume of cars sold expected through to 2022, Yole expects an average growth rate in sensors sales volumes above 8% over the next five years, and above 14% growth in sales value. This is thanks to the expanding integration of high value sensing modules like RADAR, imaging and LiDAR. The current automotive sensing market groups MEMS and classic active sensors such as pressure, TPMS , chemical, inertial, magnetic, ultrasonic, imaging, RADAR and LiDAR. “This market is worth US$11 billion in 2016 and is expected to reach US$23 billion by 2022,” announced Guillaume Girardin, Technology & Market Analyst at Yole. “This is mainly due to the boom in imaging, RADAR and LiDAR sensors, which will respectively be worth US$7.7 billion, US$6.2 billion and US$1.4 billion by 2022,” he adds.

Among classical sensors like pressure, chemical and magnetic sensors, the impact of electric vehicles will remain small in the short term. However, the advent of electrical vehicles will greatly change the amount and the distribution of pressure and magnetic sensors within the car in the longer term. More electric cars will mean fewer pressure sensors and a surge in magnetic sensors for battery monitoring and various positioning and detection of moving pieces. Finally, the automotive world is experiencing one of the fastest-changing eras in its evolution ever. Sensor suppliers are now engaged in a race where they need to be prepared for the golden age of the automotive world.

Among all sensing technologies located in the car, three main sensors will drastically change the landscape: imaging, RADAR and LiDAR sensors.

Imaging sensors were initially mounted for ADAS purposes in high-end vehicles, with deep learning image analysis techniques promoting early adoption. It is now a well-established fact that vision-based AEB is possible and saves lives. Adoption of forward ADAS cameras will therefore accelerate.
Growth of imaging for automotive is also being fueled by the park assist application, and 360° surround view camera volumes are skyrocketing. While it is becoming mandatory in the US to have a rear view camera, that uptake is dwarfed by 360° surround view cameras, which enable a “bird’s eye view” perspective. This trend is most beneficial to companies like Omnivision at sensor level and Panasonic and Valeo, which have become the main manufacturers of automotive cameras.
RADAR sensors, which are often wrongly seen as competitors of imaging and LiDAR sensors, are increasingly adopted in high-end vehicles. They are also diffusing into mid-price cars for blind spot detection and adaptive cruise control, pushing Level 2/3 features as a common experience.

Lastly, LiDAR remains the “Holy Grail” for most automotive players, allowing 3D sensing of the environment. In this report Yole’ analysts highlight the different potential usages of this technology, which will transform the transportation industry completely.

“We expect tremendous growth of the LiDAR market within the next five years, from being worth US$300 million in 2017 to US$4.4 billion by 2022,” detailed Guillaume Girardin from Yole. LiDAR is expected to be a key technology, but sensing redundancy will still be the backbone of the automotive world where security remains the golden rule.

The MEMS & Sensors for automotive report represents the best of Yole’s automotive sensor industry and imaging sector knowledge. Yole regularly participates in industry conferences and tradeshows worldwide, and maintains close relations with market leaders.

Researchers at Kyoto University’s Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) in Japan have designed a small ‘body-on-a-chip’ device that can test the side effects of drugs s on human cells. The device solves some issues with current, similar microfluidic devices and offers promise for the next generation of pre-clinical drug tests.

The Integrated Heart/Cancer on a Chip (iHCC) was used to test the toxicity of the anti-cancer drug doxorubicin on heart cells. The researchers, led by iCeMS’s Ken-ichiro Kamei, found that, while the drug itself was not toxic to heart cells, a metabolite of the drug resulting from its interaction with cancer cells was.

The device is smaller than a microscope glass slide. It contains six tiny chambers; every two are connected by microchannels with a series of port inlets and valves. A pneumatic pump controls movement of fluid through the channels. Every two chambers and their separate microchannel system constitute one test bed. Three test beds in the device allow for the introduction of minor changes in each bed to simultaneously compare results.

The team first tested doxorubicin’s effects on heart cells and liver cancer cells cultured separately in small wells. The drug had the expected anti-cancer effect on the cancer cells without causing damage to the heart cells.

They then ran the test using the iHCC device. Heart cells were placed in one chamber while liver cancer cells were placed in the other. Doxorubicin was introduced into a cell culture medium circulating through a closed-loop system of microchannels that connects the two chambers, mimicking the blood’s circulatory system. In this way, the drug flows unidirectionally in a continuous loop through both chambers.

The team found signs of toxicity in both cancer and heart cells. They hypothesized that a compound, doxorubicinol, which is a metabolic byproduct of doxorubicin interacting with cancer cells, was causing the toxic effect.

To test this, they added doxorubicinol to heart cells and liver cancer cells cultured separately in small wells. It was toxic to the heart cells but not to the cancer cells.

When doxorubicin alone is added to the liver cancer cells, the amount of doxorubicinol produced is too small to be toxic to the heart cells. The team believes this is because the amount of cell culture medium needed for the well-based tests dilutes the metabolite.

In contrast, when doxorubicin is introduced into the iHCC, the metabolite is not diluted when moving through the microchannel circulation system because a smaller volume of cell culture is needed. As a result, the drug does have a toxic effect on the heart cells via its metabolite.

The device requires further improvements, but the study demonstrates how this design concept could be used to investigate the toxic side effects of anti-cancer drugs on heart cells well before expensive clinical trials. The study was published in the journal Royal Society of Chemistry Advances.

Gartner, Inc. forecasts that 310.4 million wearable devices will be sold worldwide in 2017, an increase of 16.7 percent from 2016 (see Table 1). Sales of wearable devices will generate revenue of $30.5 billion in 2017. Of that, $9.3 billion will be from smartwatches.

In 2017, 41.5 million smartwatches will be sold. They are on pace to account for the highest unit sales of all wearable device form factors from 2019 to 2021, aside from Bluetooth headsets. By 2021, sales of smartwatches are estimated to total nearly 81 million units, representing 16 percent of total wearable device sales.

“Smartwatches are on pace to achieve the greatest revenue potential among all wearables through 2021, reaching $17.4 billion,” said Angela McIntyre, research director at Gartner. Revenue from smartwatches is bolstered by relatively stable average selling prices (ASPs) of Apple Watch. “The overall ASP of the smartwatch category will drop from $223.25 in 2017 to $214.99 in 2021 as higher volumes lead to slight reductions in manufacturing and component costs, but strong brands such as Apple and Fossil will keep pricing consistent with price bands of traditional watches,” she added.

Table 1: Forecast for Wearable Devices Worldwide 2016-2018 and 2021 (Millions of Units)

Device

2016

2017

2018

2021

Smartwatch

34.80

41.50

48.20

80.96

Head-mounted display

16.09

22.01

28.28

67.17

Body-worn camera

0.17

1.05

1.59

5.62

Bluetooth headset

128.50

150.00

168.00

206.00

Wristband

34.97

44.10

48.84

63.86

Sports watch

21.23

21.43

21.65

22.31

Other fitness monitor

55.46

55.7

56.23

58.73

Total

265.88

310.37

347.53

504.65

Source: Gartner (August 2017)

Smartwatches: A market divided between four types of providers

Apple will continue to have the greatest market share of any smartwatch provider. However, as more providers enter the market, Apple’s market share will decrease from approximately a third in 2016 to a quarter in 2021. The announcement of a new Apple Watch expected in September may enable direct cellular connectivity for interacting with Siri, texting and transferring sensor data when the phone or Wi-Fi is not present. We expect other consumer electronics brands such as Asus, Huawei, LG, Samsung and Sony to sell only 15 percent of smartwatches in 2021, because their brands do not have as strong an appeal as lifestyle brands for personal technologies.

Two sub-categories that Gartner expects to perform well are kids’ smartwatches and traditional watch brands, which will emerge as significant segments for smartwatches. Gartner expects kids’ smartwatches to represent 30 percent of total smartwatch unit shipments in 2021. These devices are targeted at children in the two to 13 year-old range, before parents provide them with a smartphone.

The other sub-category, which will account for 25 percent of smartwatch units by 2021, is fashion and traditional watch brands. “Luxury and fashion watch brands will offer smartwatches in an attempt to attract younger customers,” said Ms. McIntyre. A final sub-category is represented by the startup and while-label brands (e.g., Archos, Cogito, Compal, Martian, Omate or Quanta), which will account for 5 percent of smartwatch unit sales in 2021.

Bluetooth headsets to account for 48 percent of all wearable devices in 2017

In 2017, 150 million Bluetooth headsets will be sold, an increase of 16.7 percent from 2016. Sales will increase to 206 million units in 2021, meaning Bluetooth headsets will remain the most sold wearable device through 2021. The growth in Bluetooth headsets is driven by the elimination of the headphone jack by major smartphone providers. “By 2021, we assume that almost all premium mobile phones will no longer have the 3.5 mm jack,” said Ms. McIntyre.

Head-mounted displays remain in their infancy

Head-mounted displays (HMDs) account for only 7 percent of all wearable devices shipped in 2017, and will not reach mainstream adoption with consumers or industrial customers through 2021. “Current low adoption by mainstream consumers shows that the market is still in its infancy, not that it lacks longer-term potential,” said Ms. McIntyre.

Near-term opportunities for virtual reality HMDs among consumers are with video game players. Workers will also use them for tasks such as equipment repair, inspections and maintenance, but also in warehouses and manufacturing, training, design, customer interactions and more. Theme parks, theaters, museums and sports venues will purchase HMDs to enhance the customers’ experience in interactive attractions or movies, and add information and supplemental images at sporting events.

Gartner clients can learn more in the report: “Forecast: Wearable Electronic Devices, Worldwide, 2017.”

Analog Devices, Inc. announced today a collaboration with The Cornucopia Project and ripe.io to explore the local food supply chain and use this work as a vehicle for educating students at ConVal Regional High School in Peterborough, N.H., and local farmers on 21st century agriculture skills. The initiative instructs student farmers how to use Internet of Things and blockchain technologies to track the conditions and movement of produce from “Farm to Fork” to make decisions that improve quality, yields, and profitability. Together with the Cornucopia Project, the endeavor is funded by Analog Devices and ripe.io, with both companies also providing technical training.

For the project, Analog Devices is providing a prototype version of its crop monitoring solution, which will be capable of measuring environmental factors that help farmers make sound decisions about crops related to irrigation, fertilization, pest management, and harvesting. The sensor-to-cloud, Internet of Things solution enables farmers to make better decisions based on accumulated learning from the near-real-time monitoring. These 24/7 measurements are combined with a near infrared (NIR) miniaturized spectrometer that conducts non-destructive analysis of food quality not previously possible in a farm environment.

 

 

“This project expands on our ‘Internet of Tomatoes’ program which empowers farmers to make better decisions throughout the growing cycle, improving quality, economic, and environmental outcomes,” said Kevin Carlin, vice president, Automation, Energy and Sensors, Analog Devices. “Our crop monitoring solution will provide reliable and precise information to student farmers and local farmers so they can grow healthier, fresher, better tasting produce. It demonstrates how a crop monitoring solution extends the value and possibilities of the Internet of Things in truly transformative ways.”

The Cornucopia Project, a non-profit located in Peterborough, N.H., provides garden and agricultural programs to students from elementary through high school. Student farmers in its Farm to Fork program learn how to use advanced sensor instrumentation in their greenhouse, which provide valuable data to assess the attributes of tomatoes, and how these factors affect taste and quality. The program also educates students on how crops can be tracked throughout the agricultural supply chain to support food quality, sustainability, traceability, and nutrition.

“Analog Devices is helping us explore how advances in technology can support local food systems,” said Karen Hatcher, executive director, The Cornucopia Project. “We are training next-generation farmers in 21st century agriculture to harvest tastier, more abundant and more sustainably grown tomatoes than ever before. This initiative will contribute to enhancing the economic health and vitality of local small- and medium-size farms and the communities that support them.”

ripe.io is contributing its blockchain technology to model the entire fresh produce supply chain, combining the crop growing data, transportation, and storage conditions. Blockchain – a distributed ledger, consensus data technology that is used to maintain a continuously growing list of records – will track crop lifecycle from seed to distributor to retailer to consumer, bringing transparency and accountability to the agricultural supply chain.

“This project is one of the first implementations of blockchain technology to build an open and transparent supply chain with farmers, suppliers, distributors, retailers, food service, and end consumers,” said Raja Ramachandran, CEO of ripe.io. “What is learned in the initiative not only will improve quality, economic, and environmental outcomes in the local farming community, but also can be extended to other farms and crop species around the country.”

Analog Devices (NASDAQ: ADI) is a global high-performance analog technology company dedicated to solving the toughest engineering challenges.

A team of engineers has developed stretchable fuel cells that extract energy from sweat and are capable of powering electronics, such as LEDs and Bluetooth radios. The biofuel cells generate 10 times more power per surface area than any existing wearable biofuel cells. The devices could be used to power a range of wearable devices.

The epidermal biofuel cells are a major breakthrough in the field, which has been struggling with making the devices that are stretchable enough and powerful enough. Engineers from the University of California San Diego were able to achieve this breakthrough thanks to a combination of clever chemistry, advanced materials and electronic interfaces. This allowed them to build a stretchable electronic foundation by using lithography and by using screen-printing to make 3D carbon nanotube-based cathode and anode arrays.

The biofuel cells are equipped with an enzyme that oxidizes the lactic acid present in human sweat to generate current. This turns the sweat into a source of power.

Engineers report their results in the June issue of Energy & Environmental Science. In the paper, they describe how they connected the biofuel cells to a custom-made circuit board and demonstrated the device was able to power an LED while a person wearing it exercised on a stationary bike. Professor Joseph Wang, who directs the Center for Wearable Sensors at UC San Diego, led the research, in collaboration with electrical engineering professor and center co-director Patrick Mercier and nanoegnineering professor Sheng Xu, both also at the Jacobs School of Engineering UC San Diego.

The biofuel cell can stretch and flex, conforming to the human body. Credit: University of California San Diego

The biofuel cell can stretch and flex, conforming to the human body. Credit: University of California San Diego

Islands and bridges

To be compatible with wearable devices, the biofuel cell needs to be flexible and stretchable. So engineers decided to use what they call a “bridge and island” structure developed in Xu’s research group. Essentially, the cell is made up of rows of dots that are each connected by spring-shaped structures. Half of the dots make up the cell’s anode; the other half are the cathode. The spring-like structures can stretch and bend, making the cell flexible without deforming the anode and cathode.

The basis for the islands and bridges structure was manufactured via lithography and is made of gold. As a second step, researchers used screen printing to deposit layers of biofuel materials on top of the anode and cathode dots.

Increasing energy density

The researchers’ biggest challenge was increasing the biofuel cell’s energy density, meaning the amount of energy it can generate per surface area. Increasing energy density is key to increasing performance for the biofuel cells. The more energy the cells can generate, the more powerful they can be.

“We needed to figure out the best combination of materials to use and in what ratio to use them,” said Amay Bandodkar, one of the paper’s first authors, who was then a Ph.D. student in Wang’s research group. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University.

To increase power density, engineers screen printed a 3D carbon nanotube structure on top the anodes and cathodes. The structure allows engineers to load each anodic dot with more of the enzyme that reacts to lactic acid and silver oxide at the cathode dots. In addition, the tubes allow easier electron transfer, which improves biofuel cell performance.

Testing applications

The biofuel cell was connected to a custom-made circuit board manufactured in Mercier’s research group. The board is a DC/DC converter that evens out the power generated by the fuel cells, which fluctuates with the amount of sweat produced by a user, and turns it into constant power with a constant voltage.

Researchers equipped four subjects with the biofuel cell-board combination and had them exercise on a stationary bike. The subjects were able to power a blue LED for about four minutes.

Next steps

Future work is needed in two areas. First, the silver oxide used at the cathode is light sensitive and degrades over time. In the long run, researchers will need to find a more stable material.

Also, the concentration of lactic acid in a person’s sweat gets diluted over time. That is why subjects were able to light up an LED for only four minutes while biking. The team is exploring a way to store the energy produced while the concentration of lactate is high enough and then release it gradually.

MRSI Systems, a manufacturer of fully automated, ultra-precision, high speed die bonding and epoxy dispensing systems, is launching a new High Speed Die Bonder, MRSI-HVM3, to support photonics customers’ high volume manufacturing requirements. The MRSI-HVM3 is in full production and MRSI Systems is shipping to customers worldwide.

Scaling imperatives

Today, high volume manufacturing of photonic, sensor, and semiconductor devices demands a die bonding system that can deliver industry leading speed without sacrificing high precision and superior flexibility. The new MRSI-HVM3, a high speed, flexible, 3 micron die bonder, has been built to address this challenge. This new system leverages a well-defined set of MRSI’s core competencies, built up over 30 years, in the areas of system design, software development, machine vision, motion control, industrial automation, and process solutions.

Customer outcomes

As Dr. Yi Qian, Vice President of Product Management, states, “The new MRSI-HVM3 incorporates the latest hardware and software innovations. Equipped with ultrafast-ramp eutectic stations, it deploys multiple levels of parallel processing utilizing dual gantries, dual heads, dual bonding stages, and “on-the-fly” tool changes. Used across all products, MRSI’s platform software makes it easy for users to change process settings on their own for new parts, new processes, and new products. These features provide our customers with best-in-class throughput for capacity expansion; high accuracy for high-density packaging; and unmatched flexibility for multi-chip multi-process production in one machine. Ultimately the system will generate great ROIs for customers. The MRSI-HVM3 high speed die bonder supports many applications including chip-on-carrier (CoC), chip-on-submount (CoS), and chip-on-baseplate or board (CoB).”

“MRSI Systems has been serving optoelectronic and microelectronic customers for the past 33 years and understands their requirement to scale efficiently in today’s fast paced marketplace. MRSI is pleased to meet these needs with the launch of our new high speed die bonder for high volume manufacturing of photonics packaging,” said Mr. Michael Chalsen, President, MRSI Systems.

Private demonstrations at CIOE

MRSI Systems is exhibiting at CIOE with their Chinese Representative CYCAD Century Science and Technology (Booth #1C66) in Shenzhen, September 6-9, 2017. There will be private demonstrations of the MRSI-HVM3 performing CoC eutectic and epoxy bonding. Please reach out to your MRSI contact to ensure you have an opportunity to see the capabilities of this new product.

MRSI Systems is a manufacturer of fully automated, high-precision, high-speed die bonding and epoxy dispensing systems.

A new, electronic skin microsystem tracks heart rate, respiration, muscle movement and other health data, and wirelessly transmits it to a smartphone. The electronic skin offers several improvements over existing trackers, including greater flexibility, smaller size, and the ability to stick the self-adhesive patch — which is a very soft silicone about four centimeters (1.5 inches) in diameter — just about anywhere on the body.

The microsystem was developed by an international team led by Kyung-In Jang, a professor of robotics engineering at South Korea’s Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology, and John A. Rogers, the director of Northwestern University’s Center for Bio-Integrated Electronics. The team described the new device in the journal Nature Communications.

The electronic skin contains about 50 components connected by a network of 250 tiny wire coils embedded in protective silicone. The soft material enables it to conform to body, unlike other hard monitors. It wirelessly transmits data on movement and respiration, as well as electrical activity in the heart, muscles, eyes and brain to a smartphone application.

Unlike flat sensors, the tiny wires coils in this device are three-dimensional, which maximizes flexibility. The coils can stretch and contract like a spring without breaking. The coils and sensor components are also configured in an unusual spider web pattern that ensures “uniform and extreme levels of stretchability and bendability in any direction.” It also enables tighter packing of components, minimizing size. The researchers liken the design to a winding, curling vine, connecting sensors, circuits and radios like individual leaves on the vine.

The key to creating this novel microsystem is stretching the elastic silicone base while the tiny wire arcs, made of gold, chromium and phosphate, are laid flat onto it. The arcs are firmly connected to the base only at one end of each arc. When the base is allowed to contract, the arcs pop up, forming three-dimensional coils.

The entire system is powered wirelessly rather than being charged by a battery. The researchers also considered key electrical and mechanical issues to optimize the system’s physical layout, such as sensor placement or wire length, to minimize signal interference and noise.

The electronic skin could be used in a variety of applications, including continuous health monitoring and disease treatment. Professor Jang states “Combining big data and artificial intelligence technologies, the wireless biosensors can be developed into an entire medical system which allows portable access to collection, storage, and analysis of health signals and information.” He added “We will continue further studies to develop electronic skins which can support interactive telemedicine and treatment systems for patients in blind areas for medical services such as rural houses in mountain village.” The microsystem could also be used in other areas of emerging interest, such as soft robotics or autonomous navigation, which the team is now investigating.