Category Archives: MEMS

BY PETE SINGER, Editor-in-Chief

Solid State Technology recently conducted a survey of our readers on how the Internet of Things (IoT) is driving the demand for semiconductor technology. A total of 303 people responded to the survey. A majority of the respondents were in management roles.

Survey questions focused on their expectations for growth in the Internet of Things (IoT), drivers, potential roadblocks, opportunities and impact on semiconductor technology, including manufacturing and packaging.

There is little agreement on how strongly the IoT device market will grow. About a quarter of the respondents said, by 2020, 30-50 billion devices would be connected to internet with unique urls. Almost as many were much more optimistic, saying more than 90 billion.

A sizable majority of the respondents (59.41%) believe new companies will emerge to benefit from the growth in IoT. Existing companies will also benefit, with MEMS companies benefitting the most.

A majority of the respondents said the existing supply chain and industry infrastructure was not equipped to handle the needs of the IoT or said they weren’t sure. Similarly, most said new manufacturing equipment and new materials will be needed for IoT device manufacturing.
My take on this is that while the market potential for companies involved in IoT devices is large, there is little agreement on exactly how large it might become.

I believe it’s also likely that new companies will emerge focused specifically on manufacturing IoT devices. Existing companies across the supply chain will also benefit.

Clearly, IoT devices will create new challenges, especially in the area of packaging. Form-factor, security and reliability are the most important characteristics of IoT devices.

Another recently completed survey on the IoT by McKinsey & Company and the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) revealed some ambiguity about whether the IoT would be the top growth driver for the semiconductor industry or just one of several important forces.

The survey of executives from GSA member companies showed that they had mixed opinions about the IoT’s potential, with 48 percent stating that it would be one of the top three growth drivers for the semiconductor industry and 17 percent ranking it first.

BeSpoon SAS today launched BeSpoon Sport Edition, an ultra-precise position-tracking system that allows teams to measure and analyze player movement in three dimensions and provide immediate feedback to improve performance.

Designed for professional and other high-level competitive teams, BeSpoon Sport Edition generates key metrics such as distance run faster than 7km/h, average acceleration and jump height in real time. These next-generation statistics immediately give coaches, players and fans new insight into the action on the field.

BeSpoon’s impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) technology, which can track individuals’ or objects’ positions and movements to within a few inches, measures the time of flight of an UWB signal, and is impervious to interference by nearby people or objects. The technology is ideal for tracking movement both in terms of accuracy and robustness.

BeSpoon Sport Edition, which combines BeSpoon’s technology and SportTracking Fusion software, is being used by Chambery Savoie Handball, a professional team in France. BeSpoon recently uploaded a YouTube video showing its tracking engine at work to improve player performance.

Installed in Le Phare, the team’s 4,500-seat indoor arena, the system instantaneously computes the position of players, who are wearing tiny chips, in three dimensions and feeds the SportTracking Fusion engine. Using portable computers near the team’s bench, coaches and players are able to optimize training and step up their game. The system also generates player statistics during games for fans to view.

“It was amazing to see how quickly the tracking system was implemented by our team,” said Laurent Munier, general manager of Chambery Savoie Handball. “After a few minutes, our athletes and coaches figured out how they could take advantage of the immediate feedback and engaged with the tool to improve their performance.”

“BeSpoon Sport Edition is a new, practical and affordable way to apply the benefits of innovative microelectronics in everyday activities,” said BeSpoon CEO Jean-Marie André. “The systems’ next-generation data can dramatically improve athletes’ performance and enhance sport-fans’ experience with real-time statistics.

“In addition, sports is just one example of the many domains where inch-level tracking technology can bring disruptive changes. In logistics, our customers are now able to automate challenging and expensive operations, as well as improve security in the warehouse. Retail stores are implementing location-based operation, a radical improvement in the way stores are managed daily. Defense organizations are using the technology for location tracking, which drastically enhances soldier safety. These are just a few areas where precise-location has already started to change the game. Industry, health care and museums are next on the list.”

BeSpoon, a fabless semiconductor company that also offers system-level products and support, solved the problem of indoor position tracking with a proprietary chip that can track items or individuals to within a few centimeters. Developed in cooperation with CEA-Leti in Grenoble, France, the location process measures the time of flight of an ultra wide band (UWB) radio signal with a precision of 125 picoseconds, opening a vast range of opportunities for asset monitoring, precise indoor location in professional and consumer environments.

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.

The pure-play foundry market is forecast to grow to an all-time high of $12.2 billion in 4Q15, following several quarters in which sales remained between $11.3 and $11.8 billion, based on IC Insights’ updated foundry forecast presented in the August Update to The McClean Report 2015 (Figure 1). IC Insights defines a pure-play foundry as a company that does not offer a significant amount of IC products of its own design, but instead focuses on producing ICs for other companies (e.g., TSMC, GlobalFoundries, UMC, SMIC, etc.).

Fig 1

Fig 1

The quarterly pure-play IC foundry market has recently displayed a seasonal pattern in which the best growth rate takes place in the second quarter of the year and a sales downturn occurs in the fourth quarter.  Given that about 98 percent of pure-play foundries’ sales are to IDMs and fabless companies that will re-sell the devices they purchase from the foundry, it makes sense that the pure-play foundries’ strongest seasonal quarter (second quarter) is one quarter earlier than the total IC industry’s strongest seasonal quarter (third quarter).

However, as shown in the figure, 2015 is not expected to display the typical pure-play foundry quarterly revenue pattern.  Although 1Q15 registered its usual weakness, 2Q15 showed a sequential decline, rather than an increase. In 2012, 2013, and 2014, second quarter pure-play foundry revenue showed strong double-digit growth.  In 2Q15, results were decidedly atypical with a 2 percent decline in pure-play foundry sales. The primary reason behind the 2Q15 sales decline was the 5 percent 2Q15/1Q15 revenue decline by foundry giant TSMC.  TSMC’s 5 percent sequential decline was equivalent to a $366 million drop in its revenue.

For 4Q15, IC Insights forecasts that the quarterly pure-play foundry market will show a higher than normal growth rate of 4 percent.  With most of the inventory adjustments that held back growth in the first half of the year expected to be completed by the end of 3Q15, 4Q15 is forecast to register enough growth to boost the quarterly pure-play foundry market to over $12.0 billion for the first time.

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/