Category Archives: Packaging and Testing

InvenSense, Inc., a provider of intelligent sensor solutions, announced that since starting shipment of MEMS-based sensors in late 2006, it will reach 1 billion devices shipped in Q1 of calendar 2015. InvenSense additionally announced that, since being the world’s first manufacturer of a single chip 6-axis product family for the mobile, wearable, smart home, automotive, and industrial markets, will now surpass over five hundred million units shipped worldwide in Q1 CY15.

The market demand for ‘AlwaysOn’ sensing in consumer electronics has been growing at a rapid pace with the proliferation of premium smart phones. Yole Développement forecasts the MEMS Sensors industry is primed to grow from an estimated $13B in 2014, to $24B by 2019. InvenSense has a history of innovation, a strong patent portfolio, and has achieved numerous technological firsts, culminating in receiving its fourth prestigious award from the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) for the third consecutive year. Additionally, InvenSense was again ranked among the fastest growing semiconductor companies in Deloitte’s 2014 Technology Fast 500 List of Fastest Growing Companies in North America and market watcher IHS iSuppli named InvenSense one of “the top suppliers of motion sensors today.”

“Opportunities for InvenSense’s technology in imaging, motion, sound, and navigation continue to be strong,” said Behrooz Abdi, CEO and President, InvenSense, Inc. “We are pleased with the number of new customer products featuring InvenSense’s integrated 6-axis System on Chips (SoCs) including the strong and growing adoption into the Internet of Things (IoT) market, and we’re encouraged by the continuing validation of our Sensing Everything™ strategy.”

InvenSense is exhibiting in booth #35806 in South Hall 4 at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada from January 6 – 9, 2015.

MEMSensing Microsystems Co. and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation jointly announced the launch of the world’s smallest 3-axis accelerometer MSA330, which utilizes SMIC’s CMOS integrated MEMS device fabrication and TSV-based wafer level packaging technologies.

By vertically integrating the 3-axis accelerometer device with CMOS ASIC into a single package of 1.075×1.075×0.60mm3 (LxWxH), MSA330 achieves about 30% shrink in footprint and 70% reduction in the total size compared to the latest commercial products. It is also the thinnest of its kind, only 0.5mm after SMT and 0.6mm in total height including 0.2mm solder balls. MSA330 would be competitive not only in overall fabrication costs through all wafer level fabrication and packaging but also in miniaturization particularly for mobile and wearable applications.

“The success in MSA330 signifies SMIC the major breakthrough achieved in its fabrication of CMOS integrated MEMS devices and TSV-based wafer level packaging technologies, which is expected to enter commercial production within 2015. Such accomplishment would further benefit SMIC in broadening its manufacturing capabilities and foundry services into fabricating MEMS devices and wafer level packaging open to global MEMS customers,” said Dr. Shiuh-Wuu Lee, Executive Vice President of Technology Development of SMIC.

“MEMSensing is SMIC’s 1st domestic MEMS customer, and also one of its earliest customers worldwide which can be dated back to as early as 2009. MSA330 is the world’s 1st MEMS accelerometer enabled by WLCSP (Wafer Level Chip Scale Packaging), which is based on WLP and TSV technology. This approach belongs to the latest generation for MEMS accelerometer fabrication while other competitors are still lagging one step behind. The success for MSA330 product development proves that MEMSensing has now broadened its MEMS sensor product portfolio beyond the existing MEMS microphone and pressure sensors. We plan to allocate more resources to cooperate with SMIC to develop other advanced products and make an effort to further enrich China’s domestic MEMS industry chain,” said Dr. Li Gang, CEO of MEMSensing.

The explosive expansion of the Internet of things (IoT) is driving rapid demand growth for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices in areas including asset-tracking systems, smart grids and building automation.

Worldwide market revenue for MEMS directly used in industrial IoT equipment will rise to $120 million in 2018, up from $16 million in 2013, according to IHS Technology (NYSE: IHS). Additional MEMS also will be used to support the deployment of the IoT, such as devices employed in data centers. This indirect market for industrial IoT MEMS will increase to $214 million in 2018, up from $43 million in 2013.

The figure below presents the IHS forecast of global MEMS revenue from direct and indirect IoT uses.

Global market shipments for industrial IoT equipment are expected to expand to 7.3 billion units in 2025, up from 1.8 billion in 2013. The industrial IoT market is a diverse area, comprising equipment such as nodes, controllers and infrastructure, and used in markets ranging from building automation to commercial transport, smart cards, industrial automation, lighting and health. Such gear employs a range of MEMS device types including accelerometers, pressure sensors, timing components and microphones.

“The Internet of things is sometimes called the machine-to-machine (M2M) revolution, and one important class of machines—MEMS—will play an essential role in expansion of the boom of the industrial IoT segment in the coming years,” said Jeremie Bouchaud, director and senior principal analyst for MEMS and sensors at IHS. “MEMS sensors allow equipment to gather and digitize real-world data that then can be shared on the Internet. The IoT represents a major new growth opportunity for the MEMS market.”

More information on the topic can be found in the report entitled “Internet of Things begins to impact High-Value MEMS” from the MEMS & Sensors service of IHS.

Industrial IoT applications for MEMS

Building automation will generate the largest volumes for MEMS and other types of sensors in the industrial IoT market.

Asset tracking is the second-largest opportunity for sensors in industrial IoT. This segment will drive demand for large volumes of MEMS accelerometers and pressure sensors.

The smart grid also will require various types of MEMS, including inclinometers to monitor high-voltage power lines as well as accelerometers and flow sensors in smart meters.

Other major segments of the industrial IoT market include smart cities, smart factories, seismic monitoring, and drones and robotics.

MEMS types

Accelerometers and pressure sensors account for most of the MEMS shipments for direct industrial IoT applications in areas including building automation, agriculture and medical. MEMS timing devices in smart meters and microphones used in smart homes and smart cities will be next in terms of volume.

Indirect benefits

To support the deluge of data that IoT will generate, major investments will be required in the backbone infrastructure of the Internet, including data centers. This, in turn, will drive the indirect demand for MEMS used in such infrastructure.

Data centers will spur demand for optical MEMS, especially optical cross connects and wavelength selective switches. Big data operations also will require large quantities of integrated circuits (ICs) for memory. The testing of memory ICs makes use of MEMS wafer probe cards.

IoT Market

What’s next for MEMS?


December 16, 2014

By Paula Doe, SEMI

The proliferation of sensors into high volume consumer markets, and into the emerging Internet of Things, is driving the MEMS market to maturity, with a developed ecosystem to ease use and grow applications. But it is also bringing plenty of demands for new technologies, and changes in how companies will compete.

While the IoT may be all about sensors, it is not necessarily a bonanza for most traditional MEMS sensor makers. “The surprising winner turns to be optical MEMS for optical cross connect for the data center, where big growth is coming,” said Jérémie Bouchaud, IHS Director and Sr. Principal Analyst, MEMS & Sensors, at the recent MEMS Industry Group (MIG) “MEMS Executive Congress” held in Scottsdale, Arizona from November 5-7.

The market for wearables will also see fast growth for the next five years, largely for smart watches, driving demand for motion sensors, health sensors, sensor hubs and software –but even in 2019 the market for sensors in wearables will remain <5% the size of the phone/tablet market, IHS predicts.  The greater IoT market may reach billions of other connected devices in the next decade, but sensor demand will be very fragmented and very commoditized. Smart homes may use 20 million sensors in 2018, but many other industrial applications will probably each use only 100,000 to 2-3 million sensors a year, Bouchaud noted.

And most of this sensor market will be non-MEMS sensors, some mature and some emerging, including light sensors, fingerprint sensors, pulse sensors, gas sensors, and thermal sensors, all requiring different and varied manufacturing technologies.  Much of the new sensor demand from automotive will be also be for non-MEMS radar and cameras, though they will also add MEMS for higher performance gyros, lidar and microbolometers, according to IHS. Expect major MEMS makers to diversify into more of these other types of sensors.

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Yole Développement CEO Jean Christophe Eloy looked at how the value in the IoT would develop.  While the emerging IoT market is initially primarily a hardware market, with hardware sales climbing healthily for the next five years or so, it will quickly become primarily a software and services market.  In five to six years hardware sales will level off, and the majority of the value will shift to data processing and value added services.  This information service market will continue to soar, to account for 75% of the $400 Billion IoT market by 2024.

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Re-thinking the business models?

The IoT will bring big changes to the electronics industry, from new technologies to new business models, and new leaders, suggested George Liu, TSMC Director of Corporate Development.  He of course also argued that the high volume and low costs required for connected objects would drive sensor production to high volume foundries, and drive more integration with CMOS for smart distributed processing at CMOS makers.

Liu projected these changes would mean a new set of companies would come out on top. Few leading system makers managed to successfully transition from the PC era to the mobile handset era, or from the mobile handset era to the smart phone era, as both the key technologies and the winning business models changed, and chip makers faced disruption as well. “For one thing, the business model changed from making everything in house to making nothing,” he noted. “The challenge is to focus on where one is most efficient.”

“The odds of Apple or Google being the dominant players in the next paradigm is zero,” concurred Chris Wasden, Executive Director, Sorenson Center for Discovery and Innovation at the University of Utah.

Lots of other things will have to change to enable the IoT as well. Liu projected that devices will need to operate at near threshold or even sub-threshold voltages, with “thinner” processing overhead, while the integration of more different functions will redefine the system-in-a-chip. Smaller and lower cost devices will require new materials and new architectures, new types of heterogenous integration and wafer-level packaging, and an ecosystem of standard open platforms to ease development. TSMC’s own MEMS development kit has layout rules, but not yet behaviorial rules, always the more challenging issue for these mechanical structures. “That’s the next big thing for us,” he asserted. “These huge gaps mean huge opportunities.”

IDMs and systems companies still likely to dominate                     

Still, the wide variety, and sometimes tricky mechanics and low volumes, of many MEMS devices have been a challenge for the volume foundries.  The fabless MEMS model has seen only limited success so far and is unlikely to see much in the next decade either, countered Jean Christophe Eloy, CEO of Yole Développement, who pointed out that some 75% of the MEMS business is dominated by the four big IDMs who can drive costs down with volumes and diversified product lines. To date, only two fabless companies—InvenSense and Knowles—are among the top 30 MEMS suppliers.

Most of the rest of the top 30 are system makers with their own fabs, making their own MEMS devices to enable higher value system products of their own, which is likely to continue to remain a successful approach, as the opportunities for adding value increasingly come from software, processers, and systems.  “MEMS value has always been at the system level,” noted Eloy.

GE’s recent introduction of an improved MEMS RF switch to significantly reduce the size and cost of its MRI systems is one compelling example, with the potential of the little MEMS component to greatly extend the use of this high-contrast soft-tissue imaging technology.  Though the company sold off its general advanced sensors unit last year to connector maker Amphenol Corp., it is still making its unique RF switch using a special alloy in house in small volumes as a key enabler of its high value MRI systems. These imagers work by aligning the spin of hydrogen nuclei with a strong magnet, tipping them off axis with a strong RF pulse from an antenna, then measuring how they snap back into alignment with lots of localized antennas with low power RF switches close to the body.  “We’re now launching a new receive chain using MEMS RF switches,” reported Tim Nustad, GM and CTO, Global Magnetic Resonance, GE Healthcare. “Later we can see a flexible, light weight MRI blanket.”

Opportunity for smaller, lower power, lower cost technologies

So far, MEMS makers have driven down the cost of devices by continually shrinking the size of the die.  But that may be about to change, as the mechanical moving structures have about reached the limit of how much smaller they can get and still produce the needed quality signal.  That’s opening the door for a new generation of devices using different sensing structures and different manufacturing processes.  For inertial sensors, options include bulk acoustic wave sensing from Qualtre, piezoresistive nanowires from Tronics and CEA/Leti, and even extrapolating gyroscope-like data with software from accelerometers and magnetometers. MCube’s virtual gyro with this approach, now in production with some design wins, claims to save 80% of the power and 50% of the cost of a conventional MEMS gyro.

Piezoelectric sensing, often with PZT films, is also drawing attention, with products in development  for timing devices and microphones. Sand9 claims lower noise and lower power for its piezoelectric MEMS timing, now starting volume manufacturing for Intel and others for shipments in 1Q15.  It has also recently received a patent for piezo microphone, while startup Vesper (formerly known as Baker-Calling and then Sonify) also reports working with a major customer for its piezoelectric MEMS microphone.

More open platforms ease development of new applications of established devices

The maturing ecosystem of open development platforms across the value chain is helping to ease commercialization of new applications. The two latest developments in this infrastructure are a standard interface to connect all kinds of different sensors to the controller, and an open library of basic sensor processing software. The MIPI Alliance brought together major users and suppliers—ranging across STMicroelectronics and InvenSense, to AMD and Intel, to Broadcom and Qualcomm, to Cadence and Mentor Graphics—to agree on an interface specification to make it easier for system designers to connect and manage a wide range of sensors from multiple suppliers while minimizing power consumption of the microcontroller.  Meanwhile, sensor makers and researchers are making a selection of baseline algorithms available for open use to ease development of new products.  Offerings include Freescale’s inertial sensor fusion and PNI Sensors’ heart rate monitoring algorithms, along with other contributions from Analog Devices, Kionix, NIST, UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon to start. The material will be available through the MIG website.

Plenty of companies have also introduced their own individual platforms to ease customer development tasks as well, ranging from MEMS foundries’ inertial sensor manufacturing platforms to processor makers’ development boards and kits. Recently STMicroelectronics also adding its sensor fusion and other software blocks to its development platform.

KegData is one example of a company making use of these platforms to enable development of a solution for a niche problem – an automated system for telling pub owners how much beer is left in their kegs, using a Freescale pressure sensor and development tools. Currently the only way to know when a beer keg is empty is to go lift and weigh or shake it, a problem for efficiently managing expensive refrigerated inventory.  Adding a pressure sensor in the coupler on top of the keg allows the height of the beer to be measured by the differential pressure between the liquid and the gas above it. The sensor then sends the information to a hub controller that communicates with the internet, letting the pub manager know to order more, or even automatically placing the order directly with the distributor.  The startup’s business model is to give the system to distributors for free, but sell them the service of automating inventory management for their customers, saving them the significant expense of sending drivers around to shake the kegs and take pre-orders.

More broadly, MEMS microphones are poised to continue to find a wide range of new applications. IHS’ Bouchaud  pointed out that cars will soon each be using 12-14 MEMS microphone units, to listen for changes in different conditions, while home security applications will use them to detect  security breaches from unusual patterns of sounds, from people in the house to dogs barking. Startup MoboSens says it converts its chemical water quality data into audio signals to feed it into the phone’s mic port for better quality.

Opportunities still for new types of MEMS devices

Growth will also continue to come from new MEMS devices that find additional ways to replace conventional mechanical parts with silicon. Eloy noted that MEMS autofocus units may finally be the next breakout device, as they have started shipping in the last few weeks, and aim at shipping for products in 2015.  MEMS microspeakers are also making progress and could come soon. But ramping new devices to the high volumes demanded by consumer markets is particularly challenging. “The only way to enter the market is with new technology, but high volume consumer markets make entry very hard for new devices,” he said. “The market is saturated, wins depend on production costs, and not everyone can keep up…. The last significant new device was the MEMS microphone, and that was ten years ago.”

But innovative new MEMS technologies also continue to be developed for initial applications in higher margin industrial and biomedical fields. One interesting platform is the MEMS spectrometer from VTT Technical Research Center of Finland.  This robust tunable interferometer essentially consists of an adjustable air gap between two mirrors, made of alternating ALD or LPCVD bands of materials with different defraction indexes, explained Anna Rissanen, VTT research team leader for MOEMS and bioMEMS instruments. The structure can be tuned by different voltages to filter particular bands of light, while a single-point detector, instead of the usual array, enables very small and low cost spectrometers or hyper spectral cameras. VTT spinout Spectral Engines is commercializing near-IR and mid-IR sensors aimed at detecting moisture, hydrocarbons and gases in industrial applications.  Other programs have developed sensors for environmental analysis by flyover by nano satellites and UAVs, sensors for monitoring fuel quality to optimize energy use and prevent engine damage, and sensors that can diagnose melanoma from a scan of the skin.

Keep up with these changing manufacturing technology demands at upcoming MEMS events at SEMICON China 2015, SEMICON Russia 2015, SEMICON West 2015, and at the new European MEMS Summit planned for Milan in September.

Initially focused on the military, uncooled thermal camera sales have grown significantly due to substantial cost reduction of micro bolometers and growing adoption in commercial markets, including thermography, automotive and surveillance applications. The market research and strategy consulting company, Yole Développement (Yole) confirmed this growth last July: indeed, Yole announced +25% CAGR between 2014 and 2019 in its infrared imaging report, Uncooled Infrared Imaging Technology Market (Ed. July 2014).

In this report, Yole’s analysts also highlighted the consumer applications: this market has moved to a new phase of growth in 2013-2014. Under this context, FLIR introduced in 2014, two disruptive technologies: the LEPTON core and FLIR ONE smartphone plugin.

“A high number of pre-release reservations for FLIR ONE (more than 30K units in July 2014) already confirms the commercial success of this innovation,” said Yole.

System Plus Consulting (System Plus), a sister company of Yole, specialized in technology and electronic components and systems cost analysis, looked into new FLIR’s products and proposes today a complete teardown analysis, entitled System Plus’ report details the bill-of-material (BOM), the manufacturing process flow and related cost analysis, the supply chain evolution and a comparison with FLIR i7 infrared camera and microbolometer sensors. FLIR Systems FLIR ONE & LEPTON Consumer Thermal Imager with Microbolometer. FLIR is the world’s largest long wave IR (LWIR) camera manufacturer and main microbolometer supplier, and as such it drives the price war in the commercial market.

“FLIR’s strategy is to take volume leadership in multiple markets, make economies of scale and further decrease price,” explained Michel Allain, CEO, System Plus, the reverse costing & engineering company. “To achieve this it exploits a vertically-integrated business model and a fabless structure, with manufacturing subcontracted to ON Semiconductor,” he added.

FLIR also boosted that strategy by acquiring Indigo System’s IR imager business in 2004 and Tessera’s Digital Optics wafer-level optics (WLO) division in 2013.

This year, the company released two innovative solutions: the Lepton core and FLIR ONETM smartphone plugin. Plugged into the back of an iPhone 5 or 5S, the FLIR ONETM is the first consumer thermal camera featuring LWIR technology. It contains a visible VGA (640×480) camera and a thermal camera which provide images blended using FLIR MSX Technology.

The thermal camera uses FLIR’s new Lepton core, where costs have been reduced in every element. The most expensive component, the sensor, is an uncooled vanadium-oxide (VOx) microbolometer, featuring an 80×60 pixel resolution with 17μm pixel size. Vox provides a high temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) and low 1/f noise, resulting in excellent thermal sensitivity and stable uniformity. The microbolometer array is grown monolithically on top of a readout integrated circuit (ROIC) to comprise the complete focal plane array (FPA). An anti-reflection (AR) coated window is bonded above the sensor array via a wafer-level packaging (WLP) process, encapsulating the array in a vacuum. The purpose of the vacuum is to provide high thermal resistance between the microbolometer elements and the ROIC substrate, allowing for maximum temperature change in response to incident radiation.

The system electronics that receive and process the signal is a custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) device mounted in flip-chip on the substrate. Digital Optics’ WLO brings an important part of the cost reduction. The silicon lenses are made at the wafer level with lithography and etching processes. The final cost reduction comes from the core housing, which is a three-dimensional molded interconnected device (3D-MID). Incorporating a conductive circuit pattern inside the housing provides grounding and allows FLIR to integrate a temperature sensor.

“Thanks to its strong integration at the core level with innovative WLO, wafer-level packaging (WLP) and custom ASIC use, the FLIR Lepton is the world’s smallest microbolometer-based thermal imaging camera core,” comments Romain Fraux, Project Manager, MEMS Devices, IC’s and Advanced Packaging, System Plus.

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3D TSV begins


December 10, 2014

3D TSV integration has already been adopted in MEMS and CMOS Image Sensors for consumer applications (Source: 3DIC & 2.5D TSV Interconnect for Advanced Packaging Business Update report). Device makers such as Sony, Toshiba, Omnivision, Samsung, Bosch Sensortec, STMicroelectronics and mCube … have all brought devices to the market that integrate 3D TSV technology.

“TSV’s added- value is important: increased performance and functionality, more compact devices, more efficient utilization of the silicon space,” explained Yole Développement (Yole). Moreover, even if 3D TSV process steps are adding cost at the device manufacturing level, these technologies enable cost- saving in other parts of the supply chain.

tsv

“No more doubts about adoption of 3D TSV platform across a wider range of applications: all key players added 3D TSV into their roadmaps, engineering samples have already started to ship and preparation is on-going for entering volume manufacturing,” said Rozalia Beica, CTO & Business Director, Advanced Packaging and Semiconductor Manufacturing at Yole. This year, the industry witnessed several memory product announcements for high-end applications, with transfer to volume production planned in the near future.

“Driven by the demand to further increase in performance, 2015 will be the year for the implementation of 3D TSV technology in high volume production,” explains Rozalia.

The market research and strategy consulting company, Yole and its advanced packaging team, are closely studying and monitoring the industry’s activities in this field. The latest results can be found in Yole’s new 3DIC & 2.5D Business Update Report published this year.

Yole’s vision on further 3D TSV technology adoption will be presented during the European 3D TSV Summit 2015 in Grenoble. The company is partnering with SEMI to support the European TSV Summit, which will take place in Grenoble, France on January 19 to 21, 2015. The European 3D TSV Summit is organized by SEMI Europe. To meet Yole’s experts, discover the detailed program and register, click European 3D TSV Summit 2015.

Also, at the European 3D TSV Summit, Jean-Christophe Eloy, President & CEO, Yole will moderate the panel discussion, “From TSV Technology to Final Products – What is the Business for 3D Smart Systems?” taking place on Tuesday 20, at 5:20 PM. Jean-Christophe will highlight 3D TSV market trends and technology challenges, especially its integration for 3D smart systems application. He will welcome the following panelists: Ron Huemoeller, Senior VP Advanced Product / Platform Development, AMKOR – Martin Schrems, VP of R&D, ams AG – Bryan Black, Senior Fellow, AMD – Mustafa Badaroglu, Senior Program Manager, Qualcomm.

In parallel, Rozalia Beica will be part of the Market Briefing Symposium, on Monday 19. Her presentation is entitled: “From Development to Manufacturing: An Overview of Industry’s 3D Packaging Activities”.

“We are excited to have a group of highly qualified market experts, such as Yole Développement, joining us this year for the European 3D TSV Summit,” stated Anne-Marie Dutron, Director of SEMI Europe’s Grenoble office. “To highlight the adoption of 3D TSV technology in several market applications and to answer the demand from our members, we have given the business aspects of the 3D TSV industry more importance in this 2015 edition.”

The European 3D TSV Summit final program is now available.

OCEASOFT, a global provider of sensor-based solutions for monitoring environmental parameters in the health, medical, life science and cold-chain/transport sectors, today announced a partnership with Internet of Things networking pioneer SIGFOX, along with a new line of Cobalt sensors that can transmit data directly to cloud storage without the need for traditional cellular or Wi-Fi service.

The new Cobalt S3 line of smart wireless sensors is designed to take advantage of SIGFOX’s global network that is dedicated to the Internet of Things (IoT). It is designed exclusively for two-way, small-message device communication. This eliminates the cost and energy-use barriers to wide adoption of the IoT and greatly extends the battery and service life of connected devices.

Cobalt S3, slated to ship in January 2015, will offer all the proven monitoring capabilities of OCEASOFT’s existing Cobalt sensors, including temperature, humidity, ambient light and voltage, while providing always-on cloud connectivity via SIGFOX’s IoT network.

This approach greatly simplifies sensor installation and startup, extends battery life, and allows the sensors to maintain connectivity in isolated locations without local network or traditional cellular infrastructure. Local users can also access Cobalt S3 readings from smartphones and tablets using Bluetooth Smart.

“Working with SIGFOX to offer this new functionality to our customers is a big step forward for OCEASOFT and our commitment to provide unparalleled cloud-based access to mission-critical sensor data,” said OCEASOFT CEO Laurent Rousseau. “This is, to our knowledge, the first industrial IoT sensor-monitoring solution, and it opens new opportunities for our clients in many sectors. It’s of special interest in pollution and environmental monitoring applications, because it makes it possible to get constantly updated information from sensors in off-the-grid locations.”

OCEASOFT, which serves hundreds of clients worldwide, will initially offer Cobalt S3 in areas where SIGFOX has rolled out its network: France, Holland, the UK, and Spain, as well as several major European cities. Additional expansion is planned in Europe and the US, and plans call for extending coverage to ocean regions, which will enable new shipping and transport applications for the Cobalt S3 sensors.

Data generated by all Cobalt sensors is held securely in the OCEACloud data service, and can be instantly monitored and viewed via computer, or OCEASOFT’s ThermoClient Mobile app, which runs on iOS and Android phones and tablets.

Its wireless Cobalt sensor modules can be equipped with a wide range of internal and external sensor options, including temperature, humidity, CO2, differential pressure, ambient light and voltage. All provide continuously updated reporting, and meet demanding requirements for manufacturing, laboratory work, life sciences, cold chain/transport and other advanced industry sectors.

Interview with SEMI Europe’s Yann Guillou gives attendees a preview of the event

This year’s European 3D TSV Summit is fast approaching. Many actors from the 3D TSV supply chain will convene to Grenoble (France) on Jan 19-21, 2015. This year’s theme is “Enabling Smarter Systems”.

In a recent interview published by 3DIncites, Yann Guillou, the event’s architect, revealed the inspiration behind this year’s theme. “Each year, we try to have our conference theme reflect the current state of 3D technology as expressed by industry leaders,” he explained. “When we look at the most recent evolution of 3D TSV technology, we see that TSVs have become an indispensable part of the smarter systems development, so the theme ‘Enabling Smarter Systems’ seemed to stem quite naturally from this.”

The Summit will boast three keynote speakers who are experts in the field of 3D TSV.  In the interview, Guillou shares his excitement about the keynote choices, who all hail from companies particularly active in the 3D TSV sector. Of keynote speaker Timo Henttonen, Senior manager of packing at Microsoft, Guillou said: “For years, [he] has been a key person at Nokia in the packaging group driving new technology developments and implementing them in large volumes. Now, with Nokia’s mobile phone unit having been absorbed into Microsoft, what Timo will share with attendees should be a highlight of the Summit.” Also participating as keynote speakers will be Bryan Black, Senior Fellow at AMD and Bill Chen, Fellow and Senior Technical Advisor at ASE Group.Of the latter, Guillou says, “Bill rarely delivers talks in Europe, and I’m sure he will have key messages to pass on to attendees in his explanation of how ASE sees TSV contributing to their upcoming business activities.”

Along with keynote speakers, the conference will offer a host of invited speakers to discuss various topics that relate to 3D TSV. According to Yann Guillou, multiple criteria such as internationality and diversity of functions in the supply chain determine which speakers will be invited to present at the European 3D TSV Summit. To continue offering a program that deals with the most pressing challenges being faced by manufacturers, SEMI will include new subjects that have not been treated in previous editions of the Summit.

“For instance,” Mr. Guillou explains, “we wanted to have some presentations on ‘Interposers’, from a product and business perspective as well as from a technology perspective. In this regard, on the interposer technology side, we will take a closer look at the glass approach that is important not to neglect.”

For the first time ever, the Summit will also highlight 3D TSV technology in photonics hosting IBM and HP to present on the subject.

Since its debut, the organizers of the European 3D TSV Summit have insisted on the importance of presenting 3D TSV not only from a technology angle, but also from a business angle. “SEMI is a trade association,” states Guillou, “and one of our main goals is to inform and support our members in detecting business opportunities.” This year, SEMI will take this one step further, offering an entire Market Briefing dedicated to the outlook for the 2.5D and 3D markets, and hosting market analysts from Yole Développement, ATREG, TechSearch International and AlixPartners.

When asked what is unique about the event, Yann Guillou answers, “We are proposing a full ‘experience’ for attendees… The event is a unique combination of keynote and invited talks, industry-relevant panel discussion and a quite specialized exhibition that receives high foot traffic.” With over 330 attendees at each of the past two editions of the European 3D TSV Summit, it appears that the 3D TSV community has embraced the concept.

For more information about the European 3D TSV Summit, you can visit the website: www.semi.org/European3DTSVSummit

AXSEM, a developer of lowest-power radio microcontrollers, and SIGFOX, a developer of cost-effective, energy-efficient Internet of Things connectivity, today announced that AXSEM’s system-on-chip (SoC) with an AX8052 microcontroller has been certified SIGFOX Ready for two-way connectivity.

AXSEM’s IC, library and development system enable IoT developers to easily use SIGFOX’s long-range, two-way wireless Internet-dedicated network with AXSEM’s superior lowest-power radio technology. This combination of low costs, lowest-power consumption and international coverage makes it the ideal solution for environmental sensors, smart meters, patient monitors, security devices, streetlights and many more applications.

The SIGFOX network eliminates the cost and energy-use barriers to wide implementation of IoT and M2M solutions by providing small-message communication and greatly extending the battery and service life of connected devices.

“AXSEM was very early to recognize and respond to the demand for transceivers that provide extremely low-power, wireless connectivity for the Internet of Things,” said Stuart Lodge, executive vice president of global sales at SIGFOX. “Our network requires a reliable supply of high-performance, low-cost and extremely energy-efficient integrated circuits, and our collaboration with AXSEM helps assure those solutions will be available to our customers.”

“AXSEM is focused on enabling IoT developers with easy-to-use development tools to bring their SIGFOX devices quickly to the market,” said Dr. Thomas Wolff, CEO of AXSEM. “Our AX8052F143 lowest-power radio microcontroller solution gives those developers robust and reliable two-way connectivity to the SIGFOX global network.”

The AXSEM AX8052F143 receives with 9.5 mA current and -129 dBm sensitivity at 600 bps GFSK. The chip features a 6 dBm transmitter with only 10 mA current consumption or 16 dBm with 45 mA, enabling designers to maximize battery life while extending communication range. A frequency range from 27 to 1050 MHz completes the excellence of the device and has made the AX8052F143 an industry-leading performer for the past three years.

X-FAB MEMS Foundry today announced it received the “MEMS Foundry of the Year” award at the Best in MEMS & Sensors Innovation Awards ceremony, as part of the MEMS Industry Group’s 10th annual MEMS Executive Congress held in Scottsdale, Arizona last week. X-FAB MEMS Foundry was chosen from among five finalists in an open voting process; it also was named runner-up in the “MEMS Supplier of the Year” category. The MEMS Industry Group is a trade association that advances MEMS and sensors across global markets.

X-FAB MEMS Foundry is part of the X-FAB group, a high-volume foundry service provider with five manufacturing facilities worldwide that manufacture MEMS, CMOS and SOI technologies on 150mm and 200mm platforms. MEMS devices include pressure sensors, micro-mirrors, microphones and microfluidic devices used in a wide variety of applications.

Dr. Peter Merz, MEMS Business Unit Manager at X-FAB, said, “X-FAB is honored to receive the prized ‘MEMS Foundry of the Year’ award. We believe this achievement reflects the quality and excellence we deliver to our MEMS customers worldwide. Our commitment to enabling the commercialization of MEMS in the medical, automotive, consumer and mobile market sectors is demonstrated by our strong growth in MEMS revenues – 35-percent compound annual growth rate since 2010 – and the addition of two new MEMS fabs this year.”

MEMS devices manufactured by X-FAB can be either discrete or integrated with a range of leading analog/mixed-signal CMOS technologies down to 180 nanometers, leading to innovative solutions in terms of performance and form-factor. X-FAB offers both customer-specific processing and market-ready open-platform process technologies for pressure sensors, inertial sensors and thermopiles. It provides quick access to MEMS technologies and fast time to market for both small and large companies. MEMS customers seeking to integrate MEMS and CMOS on a single chip have direct access to X-FAB’s CMOS fabs.

X-FAB is an analog/mixed-signal and MEMS foundry group manufacturing silicon wafers for automotive, industrial, consumer, medical and other applications.