Category Archives: MEMS

Cavendish Kinetics, the provider of high-performance RF MEMS tuning solutions for mobile and wearable devices, today announced the closing of a $7 million funding round as well as the appointment of Gilles Delfassy to its board of directors. The round was co-led by Tallwood Venture Capital and Wellington Partners, with participation from Qualcomm Ventures and other existing investors.

The funding will be used to support Cavendish’s growing number of customer design-wins, following Cavendish’s first commercial product launch earlier this year. The nubia Z7 LTE smartphone for China Mobile uses Cavendish’s RF MEMS tuner to exceed China Mobile’s radio performance requirements for the 2GHz LTE frequency bands.

“The explosive growth of smartphones and wireless network traffic is driving the use of additional spectrum, which traditional smartphones cannot support efficiently. Cavendish’s innovative RF MEMS solutions are dramatically improving smartphone connection speed and battery life over the entire LTE spectrum, resolving this conundrum.” said Paul Dal Santo, CEO of Cavendish Kinetics. “The continued support of our investors and the addition of industry veteran Gilles Delfassy to our board is a strong endorsement of our roadmap and achievements thus far.”

Gilles Delfassy is a highly experienced and respected expert in the semiconductor and mobile/wireless industry. He began his career with Texas Instruments, where he created and built the company’s wireless business, which has helped to shape the industry. He has also served as president and CEO of ANADIGICS and ST-Ericsson.

“The growth opportunities for Cavendish are very exciting as the wireless industry is beginning to push for better radio performance,” said Delfassy. “Cavendish solutions have the potential to disrupt the LTE RF component market by significantly improving signal strength, data throughput and battery life of mobile devices.”

Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) today announced that Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, has joined SRC’s Trustworthy and Secure Semiconductors and Systems (T3S) program.

T3S is a new SRC-targeted research effort aimed at developing cost-effective strategies and tools to design and manufacture chips and systems that are reliable, trustworthy, secure and resistant to attack, tampering or counterfeiting. With the increasing reliance on connected mobile and embedded devices, and the lengthy and global supply chain, the ability to provide assurance that hardware systems do what they are intended to and nothing else is more important than ever.

Qualcomm Technologies joins other T3S industry participants, including Freescale, Intel Corporation, Mentor Graphics and Texas Instruments. T3S is a targeted and affordable option that is open to companies that are not already members of SRC.

“As a leader in mobile technologies and security, Qualcomm Technologies is always looking at new ways to collaborate with the industry and academia to build more secure products and is pleased to be joining SRC’s T3S initiative,’ said Karim Arabi, Vice President of Engineering, Qualcomm Technologies.

T3S is collaborating with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to jointly fund university research on Secure, Trustworthy, Assured and Resilient Semiconductors and Systems (STARSS).

This collaboration substantially increases the impact of the T3S investment and enhances the value of the federal program by utilizing funding and connecting industry and academia. STARSS recently announced a first set of projects at 10 universities totaling nearly $4 million and is soliciting a second round of proposals to be funded in 2015.

“The objective of T3S is to develop techniques and tools that provide assurance from end-to-end of the semiconductor design and manufacture process,” said SRC President and CEO Larry Sumney. “We are pleased to have Qualcomm Technologies, with its significant mobile and wireless expertise, participating in the program.”

Sand 9, Inc., a developer of piezoelectric micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) timing products for wireless and wired applications, today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted the company a core patent based on the use of piezoelectric MEMS for a wafer-level, chip-scale packaged (WLCSP) microphone (US20140084395 A1).

Today, most microphones are condenser microphones, which typically feature a fixed electrode (back plate) in close proximity to a moveable electrode (diaphragm). The back plate is usually rigid and is necessary because condenser microphones use electrostatic (i.e., capacitive) transduction between the diaphragm and the back plate to convert acoustic pressure into an electrical signal.

Condenser microphones typically use a small gap between the respective electrodes to achieve high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), frequently resulting in reliability challenges such as stiction. Such a small gap can also degrade the thermal-mechanical noise performance by damping the overall mechanical structure. Moreover, a DC bias between the electrodes is normally required to enable capacitive detection of motion, which can be a significant source of power consumption.

In contrast, piezoelectric MEMS microphones offer high electromechanical coupling compared with electrostatic transduction, enabling improved SNR with lower power consumption. Piezoelectric MEMS structures are not susceptible to stiction from particles or other contaminants, resulting in a significantly higher quality product for OEMs. Finally, piezoelectric MEMS can be implemented in WLCSP with through-silicon-vias (TSVs) to support both top and bottom port configurations with matched performance in the smallest package size.

“We are delighted to receive this latest patent,” said Sand 9’s CEO, Vince Graziani. “This brings our total number of issued patents to 52, covering an array of piezoelectric MEMS products including timing devices, microphones, and gyroscopes. It validates our belief that piezoelectric MEMS technology offers significant advantages over traditional electrostatic technology to enable higher levels of performance and quality in an ultra-small form factor.”

The influx of wireless technologies and intelligent devices has resulted in the rapid evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT), a disruptive cross industry force expected to transform the manufacturing value chain into a state of hyper-connectivity. While it is only a matter of time before end users see the compelling benefits of real-time data collection and in-depth analysis of multiple process variables from diverse distributed assets, several roadblocks remain to enforce high-level business continuity.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Internet of Things (IoT)—Challenges and Impediments, finds that improving the speed and reliability of communication, enforcing a single standard across the enterprise, maintaining a robust security platform and managing high volume datasets are paramount to the success of the highly dynamic IoT landscape.

“Security, particularly for critical infrastructure, is a key concern for end users owing to the number of attack points and potential magnitude of impact,” said Frost & Sullivan Industrial Automation and Process Control Senior Research Analyst Rahul Vijayaraghavan. “As the IoT market moves towards semi- and fully-autonomous control networks, end users will have limited awareness and control in the event of targeted attacks, heightening the risk of sudden disruptions.”

While IoT provides benefits like responsiveness, collaboration, and visibility, there remain concerns surrounding management of high volume data traffic from multiple connected assets.  End users must decide what mission-critical data (safety, financial, and operational) to manage in-house and what data should be progressively farmed out to service-platform providers.

Additionally, to derive value from the data amassed, development of extensible, industry-specific platforms that offer actionable, real-time insights to improve operational productivity should be a focal point for solution providers.

“As data becomes the currency of the future, vendors must further invest in meeting critical end user data storage, management, analytics and ownership requirements,” noted Rahul. “The ability to establish robust strategic partnerships with IoT ecosystem value chain participants will determine if solution providers can sustain growth in the fast-evolving IoT domain.”

Internet of Things (IoT)—Challenges and Impediments is a Market Insight that is part of the Industrial Automation & Process Control Growth Partnership Service program. This Insight provides value chain participants in the IoT ecosystem an overview of the key business drivers fueling IoT adoption, applications of IoT across the manufacturing value chain, and a detailed analysis of critical concerns and road blocks.

For complimentary access to more information on this research, please visit: http://bit.ly/1zyTljI.

Nine of the Top 20 Semiconductor Suppliers are Forecast to Register Double-Digit Growth in 2014

Later this month, IC Insights’ November Update to The 2014 McClean Report will show a forecast ranking of the 2014 top 25 semiconductor suppliers with the companies’ sales broken down on a quarterly basis.  A preview of the forecast for the top 20 companies’ total 2014 sales results is presented in Figure 1.  The top 20 worldwide semiconductor (IC and O S D—optoelectronic, sensor, and discrete) sales ranking for 2014 includes eight suppliers headquartered in the U.S., three in Japan, three in Europe, three in Taiwan, two in South Korea, and one in Singapore, a relatively broad representation of geographic regions.

This year’s top-20 ranking includes two pure-play foundries (TSMC and UMC) and six fabless companies.  Pure-play IC foundry GlobalFoundries is forecast to be replaced in this year’s top 20 ranking by fabless IC supplier Nvidia.  It is interesting to note that the top four semiconductor suppliers all have different business models.  Intel is essentially a pure-play IDM, Samsung a vertically integrated IC supplier, TSMC a pure-play foundry, and Qualcomm a fabless company.

IC foundries are included in the top 20 ranking because IC Insights has always viewed the ranking as a top supplier list, not as a marketshare ranking, and realizes that in some cases semiconductor sales are double counted.  With many of IC Insights’ clients being vendors to the semiconductor industry (supplying equipment, chemicals, gases, etc.), excluding large IC manufacturers like the foundries would leave significant “holes” in the list of top semiconductor suppliers.  Foundries and fabless companies are clearly identified in Figure 1.  In the April Update to The McClean Report, marketshare rankings of IC suppliers by product type were presented and foundries were excluded from these listings.

As shown, it is expected to require total semiconductor sales of over $4.2 billion to make the 2014 top 20 ranking. In total, the top 20 semiconductor companies’ sales are forecast to increase by 9 percent this year as compared to 2013. However, when excluding the two pure-play foundries (TSMC and UMC) from the ranking, the top “18” semiconductor companies’ sales are forecast to increase by 8 percent this year, the same rate as IC Insights’ current forecast for total 2014 worldwide semiconductor market growth.

 

Fig. 1

Outside of the top six spots, there are numerous changes expected within the 2014 top-20 semiconductor supplier ranking.  In fact, of the 14 companies ranked 7th through 20th, 10 of them are forecast to change positions in 2014 as compared with 2013 (with NXP expected to jump up two spots).

More details on the forecasted 2014 top 25 semiconductor suppliers will be provided in the November Update to The McClean Report.

Graphene Frontiers LLC, a developer of graphene materials and device technology, announces the issuance of a key industry patent. U.S. Patent 8,822,308, titled “Methods and Apparatus for Transfer of Films among Substrates,” covers the transfer of graphene films between surfaces using roll-to-roll manufacturing processes.

“We were aggressively pursuing this patent and securing it is a testament to the hard work and resiliency of the entire team,” Graphene Frontiers’ CEO Mike Patterson said.

This was the final hurdle in creating a cost-effective production process for graphene. With Graphene Frontiers’ etch-free transfer solution, manufacturers now have the option of not dissolving or consuming the substrate metal.

The approach is also compatible with other materials, and is particularly useful for nanomaterials, which are often difficult to develop.

“Graphene is a remarkable material, but it is only a building block,” Chief Science Officer Bruce Willner said. “The ability to handle graphene and place it among other materials – where and how we want – is critical to taking advantage of this technology.”

Recently, the company entered into an agreement to ramp-up production with The Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Albany NY. It’s an alliance that will increase the amount of employees working at the company, as well as form relationships with potential buyers.

Graphene Frontiers is a nanotechnology materials and device company based in Philadelphia. Graphene Frontiers has developed innovative and exclusive manufacturing processes that makes it economically viable for companies to begin using graphene, the revolutionary nanomaterial with potential for disrupting numerous industries with its unique sensitivity and mechanical properties.

MEMS Executive Congress — Karen Lightman, executive director of MEMS Industry Group (MIG), today announced the first open-source algorithm cooperative, Accelerated Innovation Community (AIC), during her opening remarks at MEMS Executive Congress US 2014.

Facilitated by MIG with support and innovation from inaugural AIC member, Freescale Semiconductor, the purpose of AIC is to reduce time-to-market, startup costs, risk and barriers-to-entry by encouraging inputs and collaboration from across the MEMS/sensors supply chain.

“When companies are developing products that use MEMS/sensors, they often have to develop algorithms from scratch. This inhibits innovation by compelling designers to reinvent the wheel on common algorithms every time they want to add or change functionality in their product,” said Karen Lightman, executive director, MEMS Industry Group. “Giving them access to an open-source library of introductory algorithms fundamentally changes the development paradigm. Product designers can use field-proven, open-source algorithms supplied by MIG member companies to jumpstart their development process, enabling them to gain all the benefits of MEMS/sensors that much faster.”

Steve Whalley, chief strategy officer at MIG and a former director of sensors at Intel, foresees the evolution of AIC: “Freescale played the role of catalyst in first realizing AIC, and we have been working closely with them to launch the MIG Open Source Sensor Fusion site. The site already includes open-source algorithms from Freescale, including C source library for 3-, 6- and 9-axis sensor fusion. Freescale will continue to populate the site over the coming months.”

Whalley added that MIG is already seeing more industry support for AIC: “Analog Devices, Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center (BSAC), Carnegie Mellon University, Kionix, and NISThave already come on board, and PNI Sensor Corp. will contribute three algorithms: quaternion to heading pitch and roll; heart rate monitoring using PPG sensor; and step counting. We also fully expect other MIG member companies to add further algorithms to AIC over the next 30 to 60 days, providing a rich baseline algorithm capability to assist developers with sensor fusion solutions.”

Presentations by Accenture Japan, Scripps, Toyota and ARM, were announced today for SEMICON Japan 2014, the largest exhibition in Japan for semiconductor manufacturing and related processing technology. Opening day presentations include: Makiko Eda (CEO of Intel K.K.), Chikatomo Hodo (president of Accenture Japan), Donald Jones (chief digital officer of Scripps), Tokuhisa Nomura (executive GM at Toyota), Yuzuru Utsumi (president of ARM K.K.), and Yasuo Naruke (CEO of Toshiba). The event will take place at its new venue in Tokyo Big Sight in Tokyo on December 3-5 with sessions on power devices, DFM, lithography, MEMS, packaging, test, and more.  Bringing the latest in technology and opportunities for the semiconductor industry and to the new World of IoT (Internet of Things), SEMICON Japan offers a comprehensive look at what is going on in the industry. Registration is open for both the exhibition and programs on the SEMICON Japan 2014 website at www.semiconjapan.org.

The semiconductor equipment market in Japan is forecast to grow both in 2014 and 2015.  Drivers for the increased investment are: memory devices, power semiconductors and “More than Moore” semiconductor technologies.  According to the SEMI World Fab Forecast, in 2014, Japan will spend more than $10 billion in 2014 on semiconductor equipment and materials.  The projection for 2015 is to more than double semiconductor equipment spending to $4.2 billion.

SEMICON Japan 2014 will bring Japan’s rebounding semiconductor equipment market into focus and the underlying technology and business drivers.  SEMICON Japan will enable attendees to explore key technologies and business models necessary to grow in the coming years. Highlights include:

·        East Hall: SEMICON Japan exhibitors display their products and offer seminars all day throughout the event.  The floor layout includes a dedicated “World of IOT” area (TechSPOT East), Front-end Process Zone, Back-end/Materials & Overall Process Zone, and more.

·        SuperTHEATER (Conference Tower 1F): Programs include the Opening Reception, Women in Business program, Opening Keynotes, and seven forums: Semiconductor Executive Forum, IT Forum, IoT Forum, SEMI Market Forum, 2.5D/3D IC Forum, GSA Forum, and Manufacturing Innovation Forum.

·        SEMI Technology Forum (East Hall 3 and 5): Features these sessions: Power Device, DFM, Advanced Lithography, MEMS Sensors, Advanced Devices/Process, TSV/2.5D/3D, and Packaging. No interpretation available.

·        Pavilions on: Manufacturing Innovation, Ecosystem, Chemical Materials Management, and Secondary Equipment.

·        Conference Tower programs: SEMI EHS Standards Energetics Workshop, SEMATECH Symposium, International Compliance and Regulatory Seminar, Hospitality Seminar (TRUMPF Huettinger), Sustainable Manufacturing and High Tech Facility Forum, and the SEMI Standards Friendship Party.

·        Focus on Internet of Things (IoT) includes many sessions in both the SuperTHEATER and the two TechSTAGEs.

The opening reception, opening session (Women in Business program) and  opening keynotes are no charge for SEMICON Japan 2014 exposition attendees, but pre-registration is required. In addition, SEMICON Japan 2014 includes various social networking events: SEMI President Reception, SEMI Standards Friendship Reception, Member Reception Awards Ceremony, Pavilion Exhibitor’s Networking Reception Party, and Happy Hour.

SEMICON Japan 2014 is the place for information exchange and networking opportunities for people interested in semiconductor-related businesses in Asia — through the opening keynotes, pavilion and exchange networking events. SEMICON Japan 2014 also provides exhibitors an excellent opportunity to meet major device companies through the Suppliers Search Program. Japanese-English simultaneous translation will be available for many of the events and sessions at SEMICON Japan.

For further information on SEMICON Japan, visit www.semiconjapan.org/en/.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have identified a class of low-cost, easily-processed semiconducting polymers which, despite their seemingly disorganised internal structure, can transport electrons as efficiently as expensive crystalline inorganic semiconductors.

This is a high performance semiconducting polymer with an amorphous structure. Highlighted in yellow is a single chain demonstrating negligible backbone torsion. Credit: Deepak Venkateshvaran/Mark Nikolka

This is a high performance semiconducting polymer with an amorphous structure. Highlighted in yellow is a single chain demonstrating negligible backbone torsion.
Credit: Deepak Venkateshvaran/Mark Nikolka

In this new polymer, about 70% of the electrons are free to travel, whereas in conventional polymers that number can be less than 50%. The materials approach intrinsic disorder-free limits, which would enable faster, more efficient flexible electronics and displays. The results are published today (5 November) in the journal Nature.

For years, researchers have been searching for semiconducting polymers that can be solution processed and printed – which makes them much cheaper – but also retain well-defined electronic properties. These materials are used in printed electronic circuits, large-area solar cells and flexible LED displays.

However, a major problem with these materials – especially after they go through a messy wet coating, fast-drying printing process – is that they have an internal structure more like a bowl of spaghetti than the beautifully ordered crystal lattice found in most electronic or optoelectronic devices.

These nooks and crannies normally lead to poorer performance, as they make ideal places for the electrons which carry charge throughout the structure to become trapped and slowed down.

Polymer molecules consist of at least one long backbone chain, with shorter chains at the sides. It is these side chains which make conjugated polymers easy to process, but they also increase the amount of disorder, leading to more trapped electrons and poorer performance.

Now, the Cambridge researchers have discovered a class of conjugated polymers that are extremely tolerant to any form of disorder that is introduced by the side chains. “What is most surprising about these materials is that they appear amorphous, that is very disordered, at the microstructural level, while at the electronic level they allow electrons to move nearly as freely as in crystalline inorganic semiconductors,” said Mark Nikolka, a PhD student at the University’s Cavendish Laboratory and one of the lead authors of the study .

Using a combination of electrical and optical measurements combined with molecular simulations, the team of researchers led by Professor Henning Sirringhaus were able to measure that, electronically, the materials are approaching disorder-free limits and that every molecular unit along the polymer chain is able to participate in the transport of charges.

“These materials resemble tiny ribbons of graphene in which the electrons can zoom fast along the length of the polymer backbone, although not yet as fast as in graphene,” said Dr Deepak Venkateshvaran, the paper’s other lead author. “What makes them better than graphene, however, is they are much easier to process, and therefore much cheaper.”

The researchers plan to use these results to provide molecular design guidelines for a wider class of disorder-free conjugated polymers, which could open up a new range of flexible electronic applications. For example, these materials might be suitable for the electronics that will be needed to make the colour and video displays that are used in smartphones and tablets more lightweight, flexible and robust.

Crocus Technology, a provider of magnetically enhanced semiconductor technologies and products, today announces a new Magnetic Logic Unit (MLU) based solution that can detect the position and shape of flexible two dimensional surfaces. Wearable devices, curved panel displays, flexible solar panels and, in the future mobile phones will integrate flexible shape sensor foils.

By having knowledge about the shape and bendability of these flexible surfaces, system integrators can use software to make much needed improvements, such as to correct distorted images.

Crocus’ magnetic sensors aim to provide an efficient solution for shape sensing in flexible surfaces and foils to overcome deficiencies occurring in other solutions, such as piezoelectric sensors.

Unlike other solutions, Crocus’ MLU sensors exhibit high sensitivity and directional capabilities. This means that only a minimal number of MLU sensors need to be embedded in flexible shape sensor foils. In its prototype, Crocus only uses 0.25 sensors per square centimeter, making its solution extremely cost-effective.

In addition, Crocus’ MLU sensors offer advantages in low power consumption and high-speed detection. They provide strong signals without active components. Crocus’ 20cm x 20cm prototype consumes less than 10mA (milliampere) during the sensing cycle that lasts less than 1ms (microsecond).

“Crocus has created a new IP based on magnetic sensors for flexible surface position detection. This enables equipment makers to gain in the added performance of flexible shape devices, while reducing costs,” said Bertrand Cambou, chairman and CEO of Crocus Technology. “MLU sensors in flexible displays are an exciting development. We anticipate strong interest from players in a rapidly growing market.”

As flexible displays are light, thin and unbreakable, they are expected to replace conventional displays. Key technology providers include Samsung Display, LG Display, Sony, Sharp and AU Optronics (source: Emerging Technologies Display Report 2013, published by IHS Electronics and Media).

The market for flexible displays is expected to reach $3.89 billion by 2020 (source: Markets and Markets, March 2014).