Category Archives: Applications

Engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have developed a mouth guard that can monitor health markers, such as lactate, cortisol and uric acid, in saliva and transmit the information wirelessly to a smart phone, laptop or tablet.

mems mouth guard

The mouth guard sensor offers an easy and reliable way to monitor uric acid levels in human saliva. Credit: Jacobs School of Engineering, UC San Diego

The technology, which is at a proof-of-concept stage, could be used to monitor patients continuously without invasive procedures, as well as to monitor athletes’ performance or stress levels in soldiers and pilots. In this study, engineers focused on uric acid, which is a marker related to diabetes and to gout. Currently, the only way to monitor the levels of uric acid in a patient is to draw blood.

The team, led by nanoengineering professor Joseph Wang and electrical engineering professor Patrick Mercier, both from the University of California, San Diego, describes the mouth guard’s design and performance this month in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.

“The ability to monitor continuously and non-invasively saliva biomarkers holds considerable promise for many biomedical and fitness applications,” said Wang.

Testing the sensors

In this study, researchers showed that the mouth guard sensor could offer an easy and reliable way to monitor uric acid levels. The mouth guard has been tested with human saliva but hasn’t been tested in a person’s mouth.

Researchers collected saliva samples from healthy volunteers and spread them on the sensor, which produced readings in a normal range. Next, they collected saliva from a patient who suffers from hyperuricemia, a condition characterized by an excess of uric acid in the blood. The sensor detected more than four times as much uric acid in the patient’s saliva than in the healthy volunteers.

The patient also took Allopurinol, which had been prescribed by a physician to treat their condition. Researchers were able to document a drop in the levels of uric acid over four or five days as the medication took effect. In the past, the patient would have needed blood draws to monitor levels and relied instead on symptoms to start and stop his medication.

Fabrication and design

Wang’s team created a screen-printed sensor using silver, Prussian blue ink and uricase, an enzyme that reacts with uric acid. Because saliva is extremely complex and contains many different biomarkers, researchers needed to make sure that the sensors only reacted with the uric acid. Nanoengineers set up the chemical equivalent of a two-step authentication system. The first step is a series of chemical keyholes, which ensures that only the smallest biochemicals get inside the sensor. The second step is a layer of uricase trapped in polymers, which reacts selectively with uric acid. The reaction between acid and enzyme generates hydrogen peroxide, which is detected by the Prussian blue ink. That information is then transmitted to an electronic board as electrical signals via metallic strips that are part of the sensor.

The electronic board, developed by Mercier’s team, uses small chips that sense the output of the sensors, digitizes this output and then wirelessly transmits data to a smart phone, tablet or laptop. The entire electronic board occupies an area slightly larger than a U.S. penny.

Next steps 

The next step is to embed all the electronics inside the mouth guard so that it can actually be worn. Researchers also will have to test the materials used for the sensors and electronics to make sure that they are indeed completely biocompatible. The next iteration of the mouth guard is about a year out, Mercier estimates.

“All the components are there,” he said. “It’s just a matter of refining the device and working on its stability.”

Wang and Mercier lead the Center for Wearable Sensors at UC San Diego, which has made a series of breakthroughs in the field, including temporary tattoos that monitor glucose, ultra-miniaturized energy-processing chips and pens filled with high-tech inks for Do It Yourself chemical sensors.

“UC San Diego has become a leader in the field of wearable sensors,” said Mercier.

The digital world once existed largely in non-material form. But with the rise of connected homes, smart grids and autonomous vehicles, the cyber and the physical are merging in new and exciting ways. These hybrid forms are often called cyber-physical systems (CPS), and are giving rise to a new Internet of Things.

Such systems have unique characteristics and vulnerabilities that must be studied and addressed to make sure they are reliable and secure, and that they maintain individuals’ privacy.

The National Science Foundation (NSF), in partnership with Intel Corporation, one of the world’s leading technology companies, today announced two new grants totaling $6 million to research teams that will study solutions to address the security and privacy of cyber-physical systems. A key emphasis of these grants is to refine an understanding of the broader socioeconomic factors that influence CPS security and privacy.

“Advances in the integration of information and communications technologies are transforming the way people interact with engineered systems,” said Jim Kurose, head of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at NSF. “Rigorous interdisciplinary research, such as the projects announced today in partnership with Intel, can help to better understand and mitigate threats to our critical cyber-physical systems and secure the nation’s economy, public safety, and overall well-being.”

The partnership between NSF and Intel establishes a new model of cooperation between government, industry and academia to increase the relevance and impact of long-range research. Key features of this model for projects funded by NSF and Intel include joint design of a solicitation, joint selection of projects, an open collaborative intellectual property agreement, and a management plan to facilitate effective information exchange between faculty, students and industrial researchers.

This model will help top researchers in the nation’s academic and industrial laboratories transition important discoveries into innovative products and services more easily.

“The new CPS projects, announced today, enable researchers to collaborate actively with Intel, resulting in strong partnerships for implementing and adopting technology solutions to ensure the security and privacy of cyber-physical systems,” said J. Christopher Ramming, director of the Intel Labs University Collaborations Office. “We are enthusiastic about this new model of partnership.”

The NSF-Intel partnership further combines NSF’s experience in developing and managing successful large, diverse research portfolios with Intel’s long history of building research communities in emerging technology areas through programs such as its Science and Technology Centers Program.

The projects announced today as part of the NSF/Intel Partnership on Cyber-Physical Systems Security and Privacy are:

Rapidly increasing incorporation of networked computation into everything from our homes to hospitals to transportation systems can dramatically increase the adverse consequences of poor cybersecurity, according to Philip Levis, who leads a team at Stanford University that received one of the new awards. Levis’ team investigates encryption frameworks for testing and protecting networked infrastructure.

“Our research aims to lay the groundwork and basic principles to secure computing applications that interact with the physical world as they are being built and before they are used,” Levis said. “The Internet of Things is still very new. By researching these principles now, we hope to help avoid many security disasters in the future.”

The team, consisting of researchers from Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan, considers how new communication architectures and programming frameworks can help developers avoid decisions that lead to vulnerabilities.

Another project explores the unique characteristics of cyber-physical systems, such as the physical dynamics, to provide approaches that mix prevention, detection and recovery, while assuring certain levels of guarantees for safety-critical automotive and medical systems.

“With this award, we will develop robust, new technologies and approaches that work together to lead to safer, more secure and privacy-preserving cyber-physical systems by developing methods to tolerate attacks on physical environment and cyberspace in addition to preventing them,” said Insup Lee, who leads a team at the University of Pennsylvania, along with colleagues at Duke University and the University of Michigan.

“New smart cyber-physical systems technologies are driving innovation in sectors such as food and agriculture, energy, transportation, building design and automation, healthcare, and advanced manufacturing,” Kurose said. “With proper protections in place, CPS can bring tremendous benefits to our society.”

The new program extends NSF’s investments in fundamental research on cyber-physical systems, which has totaled more than $200 million in the past five years.

NSF is also separately investing in three additional CPS security and privacy projects that address the safety of autonomous vehicles, the privacy of data delivered by home sensors and the trustworthiness of smart systems:

“Three device types are expected to successfully reach the market: smartwatch, smart glasses/HUD, and smart clothing,” announced Yole Développement (Yole) in its Sensors for Wearable Electronics & Mobile Healthcare report released in July. Yole’s analysts explain wearable is, without doubts, a promising industry. But, who will take benefit of this attracting market, growing from US$22 billion in 2015 to more than US$ 90 billion by 2020?

“Smart glasses and HUD are expected to hit the market with high volumes around 2019. Specific to the consumer market, it’s evolved with two device types,” said Guillaume Girardin, Technology & Market Analyst at Yole. “The first type are wrist-worn devices that target the healthcare and consumer markets,” he added.

It started many years ago, with wrist-worn devices from players like Polar, Suunto, and Garmin, operating in a niche market: sports. Another wave of smart bands appeared in 2008, fueled by new players like Fitbit and Jawbone; this new generation mimics the smartphone approach in that they use MEMS technologies to reduce size, increase performance and decrease power consumption. These smart devices were only able to track and digitalize the body’s real time activity via an accelerometer, which delivered little added value to the customer.

Moreover, some technical and reliability issues led to a chaotic experience for the first batch of customers. Recently, a new tech wave occurred three years ago with players like Samsung and Pebble pushing the smartwatch market, but they failed to reach a mass market due to a one-sided technological approach.

”Apple, the latest entrant in the wearable landscape with its Apple watch, is expected to sell between 16 and 20 million units this year,” said Guillaume from Yole. “Apple’s production would quadruple the total number of devices that its competitors sold last year: 4.7 million units in 2014.”

Why could the Apple watch achieve success? In its wearable electronics report, Yole’s experts identified and analyzed the main factors: mature technology, ecosystem, and marketing.

Regarding the industrial market, Yole’s believes that smart glasses/HUD and smart clothing will be well-suited for industrial and military applications. Virtual reality HUD and smart clothing will enhance workers’ and soldiers’ capabilities, increasing productivity and security. Such a market is evaluated at around $4 billion by 2020, according to Yole.

Smart glasses and HUD are expected to hit the market with high volumes around 2019

Fig 1

Fig 1

Wearable is certainly a promising industry – but who will profit? Wearable electronics’ market value is likely to grow from $22 billion in 2015 to more than $90 billion by 2020, with a CAGR of 28 percent. All these evolutions will probably lead to a mass market adoption, here Yole expects more than 134 million, smartwatches by 2020, along with 1.3 million smart glasses/HUD by 2018. In this report, Yole analyzes the current wearable industry, what the landscape is like, who the key players, and how the industry will evolve.

The wearable industry greatly interests big companies seeking a new revenue source once the smartphone business levels off. “Sensors for Wearable Electronics & Mobile Healthcare” report from Yole highlights the expected sensors as of today, and the upcoming technologies which can sustain such developments.

University of Colorado researchers sponsored by Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), a university-research consortium for semiconductor technologies, have developed new microscopic imaging techniques to help advance next-generation nanotechnology in applications ranging from data storage to medicine.

The research focuses on leveraging powerful tabletop microscopes equipped with coherent beams of extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) light. Traditional scanning electron and atomic force microscopy techniques can damage a sample. The University of Colorado’s approach promises quantitative full-field imaging with as much as a 20x improvement in spatial resolution, ultimately resulting in smarter, more energy-efficient nanocircuit designs.

“Better imaging techniques are critical for all areas of science and advanced technology, and current imaging techniques have not reached their fundamental limits in terms of spatial and temporal resolutions, dose, speed or chemical sensitivity,” said Margaret Murnane, professor of Physics and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder. “Tabletop microscopes are needed for iterative design and optimization across a broad range of nanoscience and nanotechnology applications, as we work as an industry to continue to advance Moore’s Law.”

Until recently, the resolution of X-ray microscopes was severely limited by diffractive optics. Although 10 nanometer (nm) spatial resolution was demonstrated, 25nm is typical – nowhere near the wavelength limit, according to the research team. Electron microscopies cannot simultaneously achieve high spatial and temporal resolution.

Opaque, disordered or scattering samples that are common in chemistry, materials and biology present a formidable challenge using any imaging modality. Notable demonstrations aside, current X-ray, electron and optical microscopies are simply too cumbersome and slow to routinely image functioning systems in real space and time, severely limiting progress.

Murnane explains that new coherent, short wavelength light sources fill the critical need for metrology to bridge this gap. As an example, although the Ruby laser was first demonstrated 55 years ago (which emitted coherent beams in the red region of the spectrum at 694nm), the shortest wavelength laser in widespread use is the excimer laser around 193nm. This means that in 55 years, the wavelength of widely accessible lasers has been reduced by less than a factor of 4.

The University of Colorado’s work employs coherent, or laser-like, beams of EUV light with wavelength at 30nm nearly an order of magnitude shorter that the excimer, achieving very high contrast images with a resolution of 40nm laterally and 5 angstrom (Å) vertically, representing a technology poised to change the industry.

Further leveraging advantages of the tabletop model, the University of Colorado team plans to demonstrate in the next two to five years coherent EUV and X- ray microscopes that produce real-time movies of functioning materials with less than 5nm lateral resolution and 1 Å vertical resolution in 3D.

The team’s deep-ultraviolet and EUV laser-like source technology could be used for defect detection or other nanometrology applications — either as a stand-alone solution or as an inline tool. The EUV microscope could also provide high-contrast, low-damage, full-field, real-time imaging of functioning circuits and nanosystems, among other fabrication application usages.

“Many industries that harness nanotechnologies can benefit from better microscopes for iterative and smart designs,” said Kwok Ng, Senior Science Director of Nanomanufacturing Materials and Processes at SRC. “The resolution will only continue to improve as the illumination wavelengths decrease.”

Nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego used an innovative 3D printing technology they developed to manufacture multipurpose fish-shaped microrobots — called microfish — that swim around efficiently in liquids, are chemically powered by hydrogen peroxide and magnetically controlled. These proof-of-concept synthetic microfish will inspire a new generation of “smart” microrobots that have diverse capabilities such as detoxification, sensing and directed drug delivery, researchers said.

3-D-printed microfish contain functional nanoparticles that enable them to be self-propelled, chemically powered and magnetically steered. The microfish are also capable of removing and sensing toxins. Credit: J. Warner, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

3-D-printed microfish contain functional nanoparticles that enable them to be self-propelled, chemically powered and magnetically steered. The microfish are also capable of removing and sensing toxins. Credit: J. Warner, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

The technique used to fabricate the microfish provides numerous improvements over other methods traditionally employed to create microrobots with various locomotion mechanisms, such as microjet engines, microdrillers and microrockets. Most of these microrobots are incapable of performing more sophisticated tasks because they feature simple designs — such as spherical or cylindrical structures — and are made of homogeneous inorganic materials. In this new study, researchers demonstrated a simple way to create more complex microrobots.

The research, led by Professors Shaochen Chen and Joseph Wang of the NanoEngineering Department at the UC San Diego, was published in the Aug. 12 issue of the journal Advanced Materials.

By combining Chen’s 3D printing technology with Wang’s expertise in microrobots, the team was able to custom-build microfish that can do more than simply swim around when placed in a solution containing hydrogen peroxide. Nanoengineers were able to easily add functional nanoparticles into certain parts of the microfish bodies. They installed platinum nanoparticles in the tails, which react with hydrogen peroxide to propel the microfish forward, and magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles in the heads, which allowed them to be steered with magnets.

“We have developed an entirely new method to engineer nature-inspired microscopic swimmers that have complex geometric structures and are smaller than the width of a human hair. With this method, we can easily integrate different functions inside these tiny robotic swimmers for a broad spectrum of applications,” said the co-first author Wei Zhu, a nanoengineering Ph.D. student in Chen’s research group at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego.

As a proof-of-concept demonstration, the researchers incorporated toxin-neutralizing nanoparticles throughout the bodies of the microfish. Specifically, the researchers mixed in polydiacetylene (PDA) nanoparticles, which capture harmful pore-forming toxins such as the ones found in bee venom. The researchers noted that the powerful swimming of the microfish in solution greatly enhanced their ability to clean up toxins. When the PDA nanoparticles bind with toxin molecules, they become fluorescent and emit red-colored light. The team was able to monitor the detoxification ability of the microfish by the intensity of their red glow.

“The neat thing about this experiment is that it shows how the microfish can doubly serve as detoxification systems and as toxin sensors,” said Zhu.

“Another exciting possibility we could explore is to encapsulate medicines inside the microfish and use them for directed drug delivery,” said Jinxing Li, the other co-first author of the study and a nanoengineering Ph.D. student in Wang’s research group.

How this new 3D printing technology works

The new microfish fabrication method is based on a rapid, high-resolution 3D printing technology called microscale continuous optical printing (μCOP), which was developed in Chen’s lab. Some of the benefits of the μCOP technology are speed, scalability, precision and flexibility. Within seconds, the researchers can print an array containing hundreds of microfish, each measuring 120 microns long and 30 microns thick. This process also does not require the use of harsh chemicals. Because the μCOP technology is digitized, the researchers could easily experiment with different designs for their microfish, including shark and manta ray shapes.

“With our 3D printing technology, we are not limited to just fish shapes. We can rapidly build microrobots inspired by other biological organisms such as birds,” said Zhu.

The key component of the μCOP technology is a digital micromirror array device (DMD) chip, which contains approximately two million micromirrors. Each micromirror is individually controlled to project UV light in the desired pattern (in this case, a fish shape) onto a photosensitive material, which solidifies upon exposure to UV light. The microfish are built using a photosensitive material and are constructed one layer at a time, allowing each set of functional nanoparticles to be “printed” into specific parts of the fish bodies.

“This method has made it easier for us to test different designs for these microrobots and to test different nanoparticles to insert new functional elements into these tiny structures. It’s my personal hope to further this research to eventually develop surgical microrobots that operate safer and with more precision,” said Li.

Today, imec, a nanoelectronics research center, Holst Centre (set up by imec and The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research, TNO), and the Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) faculty of Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), announced the introduction of a new wireless electroencephalogram (EEG) headset that can be worn comfortably and achieves a high-quality EEG signal. The headset enables effective brain-computer interfacing and can monitor emotions and mood in daily life situations using a smartphone application.

Wireless technology that measures body parameters has become increasingly popular in lifestyle applications. Imec and Holst Centre aim to extend the functionality of consumer applications and true healthcare monitoring wearables. To realize this, they develop headsets that combine medical-grade data acquisition with increased comfort. Imec’s wireless EEG headsets with dry electrodes are easy to apply and support long-term daily life monitoring. Such headsets can be used in consumer applications such as games that monitor relaxation, engagement and concentration. Wireless headsets can also be used for attention training, sleep training and treatment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

“Leveraging imec’s strong background in EEG sensing, dry polymer and active electrodes, miniaturized and low-power data acquisition, and low-power wireless interfaces to smartphones, we were able to focus on the ergonomics of this project. In doing so, we have successfully realized this unique combination of comfort and effectiveness at the lowest possible cost to the future user,” stated Bernard Grundlehner, EEG system architect at imec.

Designing a wireless EEG headset with dry electrodes presents several technical challenges, such as finding a balance between comfort and signal quality. To ensure good signal quality, the dry electrodes must be applied to the head with sufficient pressure. This becomes especially critical when the measurement is done over longer periods of time. It is also very important to retain this balance to accommodate a variety of people with different head sizes and shapes. However, increasing the pressure can cause user discomfort as evidenced by previous product iterations.

Imec and Holst Centre’s new headset manages to strike a harmonious balance between comfort and signal quality. This was achieved by a design procedure that optimizes shape and stiffness by prototyping and testing repeatedly in very short loops. A team of six master students from the faculty IDE of TU Delft worked on this challenge in their Advanced Embodiment Design (AED) project. After an analysis of the technology that was developed by imec and Holst Centre, design research was carried out among potential users and applications. This research led to the development of a concept which minimizes intrusiveness, making comfort possible for a large segment of the targeted population outside of a controlled research environment.

The EEG headset is manufactured in one piece using 3-D printing techniques, after which the electronic components are applied and covered by a 3-D-printed rubber inlay. The sensors that acquire the EEG signal are situated at the front of the headset in order to allow for optimal EEG signal acquisition related to emotion and mood variations. The mobile app relates the user’s emotional state to environmental information such as agenda, location, proximity to others and time of day, in order to provide feedback about the unconscious effects of the environment on the user’s emotions, thus creating awareness and actionable new insights.

EV Group (EVG), a supplier of wafer bonding and lithography equipment for the MEMS, nanotechnology and semiconductor markets, will host a special session at the 41st Micro and Nano Engineering (MNE 2015) conference–an international conference on micro- and nanofabrication and manufacturing using lithography and related techniques. The first EVG Photonics Workshop will take place at the World Forum in The Hague, The Netherlands, during the afternoon of the opening day of MNE 2015 on Wednesday, September 21.

Photonic applications are emerging rapidly, with photonic devices enabling new functionalities, smaller form factors, improved performance and reduced costs for broadband communications, sensing, bio-medical measurement devices and other applications. In particular, silicon photonics have received significant attention in recent years owing to their potential for enabling energy-efficient and affordable short-reach optical interconnects.

The EVG Photonics Workshop will bring together leading experts from device manufacturing and system suppliers to discuss flexible cooperation models, available platforms and applications, including nanoimprint lithography as an efficient manufacturing solution for photonic devices. The aim of this workshop is to foster the development of customer and industry partnerships, overcome the challenges and reduce the time to market for innovative photonic devices and applications. The EVG Photonics Workshop is free of charge. However, seating is limited and online registration is required at www.EVGroup.com/EVGPhotonicsWorkshop.

The EVG Photonics Workshop complements the company’s other activities at MNE 2015. In addition to exhibiting at the show (booth #12), EVG is a collaborative partner on the Single Nanometer Manufacturing beyond CMOS devices (SNM) project, which will be the topic of an MNE special session, “Single Nanometer Manufacturing,” on Tuesday, September 22 from 17:00 – 19:00.

The aim of the European Commission-funded SNM project is to establish new paths for manufacturing ultimate nanoscale electronic, optical and mechanical devices. 16 organizations from industry, academia and research institutes are participating in this unique project, which is headed by Professor Ivo W. Rangelow of the Technische Universität Ilmenau. The session will inform experts in lithography techniques and pattern transfer, metrology specialists and all other interested specialists about the latest and future developments in nanoscale manufacturing.

Full details on both events can be found on the MNE 2015 website at http://mne2015.org/programme/satellite-meetings/special-sessionsuser-meetings/

As Bosch, InvenSense and STMicroelectronics continue to go head-to-head in an attempt to capture the biggest shares of the growing MEMS market, SEMI has announced that it will bring these MEMS giants together in an unprecedented European conference & exhibition to discuss the future of MEMS and Sensors.

The SEMI European MEMS Summit will take place on September 17-18, 2015 in Milan Italy. Featuring international speakers, exhibitors and attendees, the event is expected to tackle the most pressing issues currently facing the industry. Click here for a detailed agenda and to register.

Sensing the Planet, MEMS for Life

SEMI will be hosting some of the most influential decision-makers in MEMS and Sensors as they discuss the European MEMS Summit’s theme: Sensing the Planet, MEMS for Life. Constant innovation in the realm of MEMS is helping to define a new relationship between people, their devices and the world around them, a world that they can now sense, measure and monitor with just the push of a button. A few kilometers away, cultural and political figures from around the globe at Milan EXPO 2015, Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life – insisting on the need for more intelligent resource distribution. It is not a stretch to think that MEMS technology will be instrumental in the efficient management of our planet’s resources in years to come.

SEMI endeavors to give its members and the ecosystem in the industry a platform for presenting some of the most important challenges and promising technologies that will define the future development of MEMS and Sensors.

What to expect from the European MEMS Summit conference

Business

Yole Développement recently announced that the MEMS market is projected to grow to $22 billion by 2018. Applications for MEMS continue to expand in the automotive and personal electronics sectors, giving MEMS manufacturers a favorable environment for growth. In this growing market, what are the most promising business prospects and of which opportunities do companies need to take advantage?

SEMI will give attendees an in-depth view of the challenges and opportunities for the MEMS industry today. Attendees will hear from six experts, including keynote speaker Benedetto Vigna, Executive VP of STMicroelectronics, who will share their insights into the business of MEMS today. Speakers will share, among other things, strategies for improving the MEMS value chain, the opportunities and risks associated with the development of highly individualized MEMS devices and the important innovations in the sector that will present big opportunities in the near future.  Of note: a presentation from SITRI will demonstrate China’s ambitious investment in microelectronics these days and the country’s deep interest in sharing their development of MEMS and Sensors with European and international companies.  Not coincidentally, a Chinese delegation composed of domestic device makers, foundries, OSAT and equipment suppliers will be present at the Summit to meet with members of the European industry.

Technology

Conference-goers will also learn all about the today’s cutting-edge innovations & processes in the development of MEMS devices. The segment will include a keynote address by Kees Joosse of TSMC Europe. Invited speakers will discuss current MEMS technology and the trends on the horizon that will make MEMS smaller, smarter and less expensive. Most notably, attendees will hear about MEMS and CMOS co-integration, sensors hubs and sensor fusion, MEMS manufacturing on 300mm wafers, thin film piezoelectric and magnetic materials, TSV/TGV, interposers, and Wafer Level Packaging. TSMC, ASE, Silex, CEA-Leti and STMicroelectronics will be among the companies addressing the above-mentioned topics.

Applications

The key for the continued growth of the MEMS sector is the increasing pervasiveness of the technology in everyday devices and its now systematic integration into new devices. The applicative segments of the MEMS Summit will focus on the IoT, consumer electronics, wearables and the automotive sector, with keynote talks given by Bosch Sensortec’s CEO and GM, Steffen Finkbeiner and InvenSense’s CEO, Behrooz Abdi. Finkbeiner and Abdi will respectively talk about “MEMS Sensors: Enabler of the IoT” and “Internet of Sensors”, each sharing his vision of the current state and the potential evolution of the IoT. In addition, speakers from ams AG and ARM will share their viewpoints and value propositions for the IoT. Infineon and Huawei will also be present to give talks on consumer electronics.

The session will end with a noteworthy session dealing with the changes in the MEMS automotive landscape, featuring James Bates, VP Sensor and Analog at Freescale, Gina-Maria Espinoza-Garcia from Sensata (the new number 2 company in Automotive MEMS) and Jérémie Bouchaud from IHS.

More than just a conference!

In addition to a high-caliber conference, the European MEMS Summit will offer an industry exhibition as well as a wealth of good networking opportunities. The exhibition will host 30 companies that are important actors in the field of MEMS. A series of coffee and lunch breaks will give visitors a chance to acquaint themselves with the summit exhibitors and their products, and will also give them the opportunity to meet fellow colleagues working in MEMS. Held at the Atahotel Expo Fiera, attendees will be just steps away from EXPO 2015, Milan’s Universal Exposition.

Join SEMI for this important industry event to stay on the cutting edge of MEMS & Sensor technology!

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. today announced a new family of Energy Harvesting Power Management Integrated Circuits (PMICs) that enable tiny, solar-powered wireless sensors for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The new devices are the world’s lowest-power, single-chip Energy Harvesting PMICs, and can be used with solar cells as small as 1 cm(2). The new PMIC devices are fully integrated, making them ideal for batteryless Wireless Sensor Nodes (WSNs) that monitor physical and environmental conditions for smart homes, commercial buildings, factories, infrastructure and agriculture.  Cypress offers a complete, battery-free Energy Harvesting solution that pairs the S6AE101A PMIC, the first device in the new family, with the EZ-BLE PRoC module for Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity, along with supporting software, in a $49 kit.

The WSN IoT device market is expected to grow to more than 5 billion units by 2020, putting a premium on battery-free implementations to reduce cost and maintenance problems. The placement of a WSN may limit its size and the amount of light available, thereby limiting the size and power output of the solar module and the startup power available for the Energy Harvesting PMIC. The new Cypress Energy Harvesting PMIC devices address these challenges with startup power of 1.2uW–4x lower than the nearest competitor–and consumption current as low as 250nA, maximizing the power available for the sensing, processing and communications functions of a target application. The fully-certified, small-form-factor EZ-BLE PRoC module, which is based on Cypress’s PRoC BLE Programmable Radio-on-Chip solution, works with the PMIC devices to contribute to the low power and ease-of-use of an energy harvesting system solution.

“The most compelling new Wireless Sensor Nodes that will drive IoT growth are self-powered, can be deployed anywhere for more than 10 years, and require minimal deployment and maintenance costs,” said Kiyoe Nagaya, vice president of the Analog Business Unit at Cypress. “Using our new Energy Harvesting PMIC and EZ-BLE PRoC Bluetooth Smart module, Cypress offers a complete solution that enables developers to create solar-powered WSNs for batteryless IoT devices.”

Startups and small electronics companies spent $78.3 billion on semiconductors in 2014, representing 23 percent of the total market, compelling semiconductor companies to revisit their sales strategy to focus on the large number of smaller organizations than relying on big deals from large customers, research firm Gartner said.

Gartner estimates that there are more than 165,000 companies that buy semiconductor chips around the world: The top 10 spend nearly 40 percent of the total semiconductor revenue; the top 11 to 100 spend about 30 percent; and the remainder spend 30 percent.

Despite the top 10 accounting for such a large percentage of the market, some of the largest customers have decreased orders in the past five years, challenging the semiconductor vendors that mainly supplied to them.

While Samsung and Apple have significantly increased orders in the same period due to success in the smartphone market, semiconductor vendors are concerned about the risk of relying on large customers such as these.

“The industry has seen some fairly significant disruption in recent years, which has highlighted the risks associated with semiconductor vendors putting all of their focus on a limited number of large customers, when small companies offer highly profitable and stable growth,” said Masatsune Yamaji, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner. “To overcome the risk, some semiconductor vendors have tried to increase their business with small customers, while others are also realizing that they should adjust their strategies to do this.”

China is the fastest-growing among the major small-customer regions, with spending by these organizations on semiconductors growing from US$7.5 billion in 2007 to US$14.9 billion in 2014; growth in the smartphone and media tablet markets has been strong. In the Americas, EMEA and Japan, revenue from each customer is small, but the total market size of small customers is big due to the large number of such customers.

Gartner maintains that the number of customers will significantly increase after 2017, due to future growth of the electronics market and the increase in the number of Internet of Things solutions. It is anticipated that the maker movement, which creates and markets products that are recreated and assembled using unused, discarded or broken products from computer-related devices, will drive the foundation of startups and growth of small customers.

According to Gartner, big deals are not confined to large organizations, with many successful vendors having success in the small-customer market by leveraging distributors. Limited sales resources can be compensated for by aligning with good sales partners. Strong adherence to direct sales restricts the opportunities with small customers, especially among general-purpose semiconductor vendors. In fact, semiconductor distributors earn a large part of their revenue from general-purpose semiconductors.

“Semiconductor vendors should focus more on the high-tier customers and outsource sales activities with small customers to distributors,” said Yamaji. “Distributors can bring various products to market at the same time, so this outsourcing will reduce the load, not just for semiconductor vendors, but also for customers. Some distributors offer end-of-life product delivery services, so vendors should partner with these distributors to help small customers avoid having to order excessive loads.”

Gartner recommends that vendors need to evaluate how much revenue can be expected, compared with the large customers. The importance of the small customers for each vendor differs by its product type and its target sales region, so vendors need to have their own unique goals in the small-customer market.

“Before jumping in, semiconductor vendors also need to be aware of the risks associated with the small-company market, which is prone to shrinking when the macro economy weakens,” said Yamaji. “Revenue can also shrink even faster than large customers in many cases, so it is important to be aware of risk levels regarding any revenue decline. Vendors can reduce the risks by diversifying their customer base, which can spread the liability to allow for lost orders.”