Category Archives: MEMS

wafer bonding and packagingEV Group (EVG), a supplier of wafer bonding and lithography equipment for the MEMS, nanotechnology and semiconductor markets, today announced that it is developing equipment and process technology to enable covalent bonds at room temperature. This technology will be available on a new equipment platform, called EVG580 ComBond, which will include process modules that are designed to perform surface preparation processes on both semiconductor materials and metals. EVG built on its decades of experience with plasma activated wafer bonding to create a novel process through which the treated surfaces form strong bonds at room temperature instantaneously without the need for annealing.

"In response to market needs for more sophisticated integration processes for combining materials with different coefficients of thermal expansion, we have developed a revolutionary process technology that enables the formation of bond interfaces between heterogeneous materials at room temperature," stated Markus Wimplinger, corporate technology development and IP director for EV Group. "Our expertise in wafer bonding process technology will allow us to provide different variants of the new process according to the requirements of different substrate materials and applications."

EV Group’s new process solutions will enable covalent combinations of compound semiconductors, other engineered substrates and heterogeneous materials integration for applications such as silicon photonics, high mobility transistors, high-performance/low-power logic devices and novel RF devices. The process technology and equipment that enables this room temperature covalent wafer bonding will be applied to EVG’s wafer bonding solutions for MEMS wafer-level packaging as well as to the integration of MEMS and CMOS devices.

Equipment systems based on a 200-mm modular platform, tailored for the specific needs of the new processes, will be available in 2013.

InvenSense, Inc. and Avnet Memec this week announced the formation of a pan-European distribution agreement. With the new partnership, Avnet Memec is chartered with sales and support for InvenSense’s MotionTracking devices throughout Europe and Israel.

“Aligning with InvenSense is very exciting as they have industry-leading MEMS sensors, and their 6- and 9-axis MotionTracking devices are particularly compelling and innovative,” said Steve Haynes, president of Avnet Memec. “Also, their proven products meet the expanding demands of consumer electronics OEMS, as well as industrial and automotive manufacturers. Our agreement with InvenSense is poised to open new and exciting opportunities for both organizations throughout Europe.”

“The demand for InvenSense products is growing throughout the pan-European region,” said Behrooz Abdi, President and CEO of InvenSense. “As Avnet Memec has a worldclass sales and support infrastructure that is intensely focused on customer support and demand creation, it is the ideal partner to increase InvenSense’s footprint in this region.”

MotionTracking devices are widely deployed in many consumer electronic devices including smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and smart TVs as they provide an intuitive way for consumers to interact with their electronic devices by tracking motion in free space and delivering these motions as input commands. Accurately tracking complex user motions requires the use of motion sensors such as gyroscopes, accelerometers, compasses, and pressure sensors.

Shipments of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) microphones in 2012 amounted to 2.05 billion units, up 57% from 1.30 billion in 2011, according to IHS iSuppli. Shipments will climb by another 30% to 2.66 billion units in 2013, to be followed by at least three more years of notable double-digit-rate increases. By 2016, approximately 4.65 billion MEMS microphones will be shipping, IHS predicted.

Revenues also made big gains in 2012, up 42% to $582 million, on the way to a projected $1.0 billion by 2016, IHS indicated.

"Microphones continue to be one of the biggest success stories in MEMS, with the rapid growth of the device due to its increasing penetration in the four areas of cellphones, laptops, headsets and media tablets," said Jeremie Bouchaud, director and senior principal analyst for MEMS & sensors at IHS. "MEMS microphones also can be found to a lesser extent in applications such as gaming, cameras, televisions and hearing aids, contributing to their broadening use overall, with further utilization coming to set-top boxes this year and to automotive during the next three years."

For handsets – by far the top application – penetration of MEMS microphones rose to 69% in 2012, up from 52% in 2011 and 38% in 2010, IHS said. In particular, multiple microphones are now being adopted in smartphones for noise suppression, in which the cancellation of ambient sounds is crucial for handsets when carrying out voice commands, like what Siri does in the Apple iPhones. The total number of microphones per handset is also on the rise: While midrange to high-end smartphones mostly used two microphones in 2010 and 2011, three microphones are fast becoming standard ever since Apple introduced a third device on the back of the iPhone 5 for high-definition video recording.

MEMS microphones are likewise making major headway into tablets, expected to become the second-ranked application by 2016, IHS noted. Even though the first tablets on the market, such as the initial iPad from Apple and the Galaxy Tab from Samsung Electronics, used electret condenser microphones (ECM), MEMS microphones had started to appear by the second generation of tablets. New use cases for noise suppression and voice commands are expected to add to the total device count moving forward, resulting in as many as four microphones in some tablets in the future.

MEMS microphones were also present in more than half of notebooks in 2012, as well as in headsets for the iPhone 4 and 4S, IHS added.

The MEMS microphone market is driven by both price and performance considerations, IHS pointed out. While MEMS microphones remain much more expensive than ECMs – over which MEMS microphones enjoy advantages in reliability, performance and ease of manufacturing – the price gap between the two has been narrowing. Moreover, sound quality and acoustics are becoming important differentiators in mobile devices, with manufacturers like Nokia and Apple willing to pay a significant price premium to obtain better performance and recently migrating to MEMS.

Apple, for instance, used ECMs exclusively for its first iPad and until the iPhone 3GS. Since the iPad 2 and iPhone 4, however, the California-based maker has switched to solely using MEMS microphones, IHS observed.

Both Apple and Samsung were the top consumers of MEMS microphones in 2012, accounting for a combined 54% of all shipped MEMS microphones, well ahead of other significant users like LG Electronics and Motorola, according to IHS.

The top supplier of MEMS microphones was US-based Knowles Electronics, which continued to dominate even though its share of shipments in 2012 slipped to 58%, down from 74% in 2011, on the face of increased competition, said IHS. Knowles is a second supplier of MEMS microphones for the iPhone, and is a first supplier for the iPad mini.

Other important MEMS microphone suppliers were AAC and Goertek, both from China and ranked second and third, respectively, IHS said. In fourth place was Analog Devices from Massachusetts, the sole supplier in the iPhone 5 of the third microphone – a high-performance, high-revenue-generating part.

Together the four top makers represented nearly 90% of MEMS microphone shipments in 2012, with the remaining portion of the market split among seven other suppliers, including Italian-French supplier STMicroelectronics in fifth place, IHS said.

Chinese makers figure prominently in the industry – as do Chinese smartphones and handset manufacturers acting as consumers, emerging as a major driving force after utilizing some 200 million MEMS microphone units in 2012, IHS noted.

brooks instruments mass flow controllerBrooks Instrument, a provider of flow measurement and control instrumentation to the microelectronics industry, will launch the GF135 pressure transient insensitive (PTI) mass flow controller at SEMICON China, March 19-21 at Shanghai New International Expo Center. In its first year at SEMICON China, Brooks will showcase the GF135 and its high-performance digital solutions for flow, vacuum and pressure measurement with partner SCH Electronics at booth 5505.

The GF135 improves yield and uptime with real-time integral rate-of-decay flow measurement and advanced diagnostic capabilities to verify accuracy, check valve leak-by and monitor sensor drift without stopping production. It provides market-leading actual process gas accuracy and ultra-fast flow settling time for reduced process cycle time. Onboard diagnostic data logging, zero stability trending and correction, and early detection of valve corrosion or clogging allow semiconductor manufacturers to achieve tighter tolerances and maintain uniformity in etch profiles and critical dimensions. The combination of these features allows the GF135 to deliver accuracy and cost savings to the semiconductor industry.

Additionally, Brooks will demo its GF81 mass flow controller, the new high-flow version of the GF80. The GF81 is the mass flow controller of choice for process engineers in solar, coatings and industrial thin-film applications. The GF81 offers flow rates up to 300 slpm, as well as a high-purity flow path. Unlike other high-flow mass flow controllers, it has a smaller footprint and offers the broadest range of communication protocols.

Based in Pennsylvania, Brooks Instrument is a multi-technology instrumentation company serving a range of markets. Brooks also owns Key Instruments, which offers precision machined acrylic flow meters, molded plastic flow meters, glass tube flow meters, and flow control valves. The company has manufacturing locations, sales, and service offices in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

New automotive technologies that go beyond touchscreens, satellite radio, and voice-activated GPS commands are being tested and improved, and will soon begin to appear in many more new car models, resulting in solid growth for the automotive IC market through 2016, according to the 2013 edition of IC Insights’ IC Market Drivers—A Study of Emerging and Major End-Use Applications Fueling Demand for Integrated Circuits.

Military-like night-vision systems that quickly identify pedestrians, animals or road hazards in low-light conditions; airbags stowed in shoulder harnesses of seatbelts; and the ability for drivers to customize the look of their dashboard instrument panels are examples of systems that are available in a select number of cars now, but will soon become available in many more vehicles. Along with backup cameras, electronic stability control, active-cruise control, and several other systems covered in the IC Market Drivers report, emerging electronic systems are forecast to help the automotive IC market grow 52% from $18.2 billion in 2012 to $27.7 billion in 2016. This growth translates to an average annual increase of 11% for the automotive IC market.

Analog ICs and MCUs are forecast to benefit most from the increasing electronic content within automobiles.  According to the IC Market Drivers report, analog ICs accounted for 41% of the 2012 automotive IC market (Figure 2).  Analog ICs are used in “traditional” applications such as to gauge input functions like speed measurement and for output functions like opening and closing power windows and adjusting power seats.  One of the newer applications for analog ICs in cars is LED lighting.  Depending on the application, LED drivers and various converters are used to supply constant current despite variations in battery voltage.

Microcontrollers accounted for 36% of the automotive IC market in 2012.  16-bit applications in chassis and safety applications (lane-detection warning, hands-free telematics, etc.) are increasing, but enhanced 8-bit and low-end 32-bit MCUs are competing for many of the same sockets as 16-bit controllers.  Applications like anti-skid braking and airbag systems are solidly 16-bit now, but are transitioning to larger bit widths.  Electronic parking assist could be a new sweet spot for 16-bit MCUs. These systems typically use two to four (but as many as eight) ultrasonic sensors to detect objects near the vehicle.  Processing the additional information drives the requirements into the domain of 16-bit devices.

The 32-bit chips are incorporated into powertrains to handle functions such as electronic throttle control, cylinder deactivation, variable valve timing, and fuel injection, and in next-generation chassis and safety systems including active high-end electronic stability control, complex smart airbag systems, and more.  In addition, 32-bit MCUs are used to process sophisticated, real-time sensor functions within safety and crash-avoidance systems.

Gesture recognition is a growing trend that is being incorporated both inside and outside the car. 32-bit MCUs are at the core of many emerging gesture-recognition systems and in many ways, they are an extension of gesture-recognition technology found onboard in game controllers.

Though the automotive market represents only about 7% of total IC sales, increasing electronic system content in motor vehicles is forecast to result in this segment being one of the fasting-growing end-use categories through 2016.

 

 

Yole Développement’s research has credited STMicroelectronics for capitalizing on the booming demand for MEMS in mobile devices by shipping 58% more MEMS units in 2012, to become the first company to reach $1 billion in MEMS sales. And that was in a year when the average prices of accelerometers and gyroscopes that are its core MEMS products dropped by 20%-30%.

“The company was there and ready with its 8-inch fab when the volume demand started, as well as a large portfolio of products and low prices,” said Laurent Robin, Activity Leader, Inertial MEMS Devices & Technologies at Yole Développement. “They could use a feed-the-fab-strategy to build volumes, and discounts for buyers of multiple devices to meet the price demands of the cell phone makers.”

“Even more than Yole Développement’s recognition of ST’s achieving the revenue milestone, we appreciate the endorsement from our customers, across a broad range of applications and segments, of our strategy of being a reliable one-stop MEMS partner,” said Benedetto Vigna, Executive Vice President and General Manager of STMicroelectronics Analog, MEMS and Sensors Group. “We remain fully committed to continuing to meet our customers’ expectations and to expanding the role of sensors in ways that augment all of our lives.”

The morphing of the MEMS industry into a high volume consumer smart phone business has played to the advantage of big IDMs with their ability to ramp volumes to price aggressively, and to offer customers a wide variety of products from a single source to simplify the supply chain. The inertial sensor business also drove healthy 14% MEMS growth at Robert Bosch, boosting that big IDM’s sales close to those of long time industry leader Texas Instruments in a further reshuffling of the top companies lineup. Yole Développement will release its complete listing of the Top 30 MEMS companies early in April.

ST is now churning out some 4 million MEMS devices a day, offering not only inertial sensors but also now consumer pressure sensors, microphones, and e-compasses. The fully-integrated supplier has been able to optimize all steps in the process to wring out costs, from its mature standard manufacturing process for all inertial sensors, to its inhouse ASIC design, to its long expertise in common LGA packaging across all products, to its high volume parallel testing developed on commercial equipment with SPEA, to its sales force that can sell and deal on the whole smart phone sensor line. The company has also pushed the manufacturing technology to bring down die size, replacing glass frit with narrower gold bonding frames and replacing big bond pads with smaller TSVs made by etching air gaps around polysilicon vias. And it turned to outside partnerships (microphone technology from Omron) and purchases (magnetometers from Honeywell) to get new products to market faster.

Connecting the (quantum) dots


February 26, 2013

Recent research offers a new spin on using nanoscale semiconductor structures to build faster computers and electronics. Literally.

University of Pittsburgh and Delft University of Technology researchers reveal in the Feb. 17 online issue of Nature Nanotechnology a new method that better preserves the units necessary to power lightning-fast electronics, known as qubits. Hole spins, rather than electron spins, can keep quantum bits in the same physical state up to 10 times longer than before, the report finds.

"Previously, our group and others have used electron spins, but the problem was that they interacted with spins of nuclei, and therefore it was difficult to preserve the alignment and control of electron spins," said Sergey Frolov, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy within Pitt’s Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, who did the work as a postdoctoral fellow at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Whereas normal computing bits hold mathematical values of zero or one, quantum bits live in a hazy superposition of both states. It is this quality, said Frolov, which allows them to perform multiple calculations at once, offering exponential speed over classical computers. However, maintaining the qubit’s state long enough to perform computation remains a long-standing challenge for physicists.

"To create a viable quantum computer, the demonstration of long-lived quantum bits, or qubits, is necessary," said Frolov. "With our work, we have gotten one step closer."

The holes within hole spins, Frolov explained, are literally empty spaces left when electrons are taken out. Using extremely thin filaments called InSb (indium antimonide) nanowires, the researchers created a transistor-like device that could transform the electrons into holes. They then precisely placed one hole in a nanoscale box called "a quantum dot" and controlled the spin of that hole using electric fields. This approach— featuring nanoscale size and a higher density of devices on an electronic chip—is far more advantageous than magnetic control, which has been typically employed until now, said Frolov.

"Our research shows that holes, or empty spaces, can make better spin qubits than electrons for future quantum computers."

"Spins are the smallest magnets in our universe. Our vision for a quantum computer is to connect thousands of spins, and now we know how to control a single spin," said Frolov. "In the future, we’d like to scale up this concept to include multiple qubits."

Tech spending still going strongIT spending remained broadly strong throughout a difficult end to 2012, as business confidence waned in the shadow of the "fiscal cliff,” economic growth declined in much of Europe, and economies in Asia/Pacific struggled to cope with reduced exports, according to the latest International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Black Book. In spite of these headwinds, worldwide IT spending recorded annual growth of 5.9% in 2012 in constant currency terms, keeping pace with the 5.8% growth recorded in 2011. Total IT spending on hardware, software and IT services reached $2 trillion, while ICT spending (including telecom services) increased by 4.8% to $3.6 trillion.

Last year was difficult for U.S.-based IT suppliers, however, which were adversely affected by the strength of the dollar throughout most of the year. In U.S.-dollar terms, worldwide IT spending grew by just 3.3%. This marked a significant slowdown from the U.S. dollar growth rate of 9.5% recorded in 2011. In 2013, IT spending is expected to increase by 5.5% as businesses and consumers continue to invest in mobile devices, storage, networks, and software applications.

While overall IT spending remained stable, 2012 was another difficult year for the PC industry, which recorded a 2% decline in annual revenues. Revenue declines were also recorded in servers, PC monitors, and feature phones as cannibalization from tablets and smartphones continued to reshape the IT industry landscape. For the first time, spending on smartphones in 2012 exceeded PCs, reaching almost $300 billion, while PC spending declined to $233 billion.

"Cannibalization is happening across the industry," said Stephen Minton, Vice President in IDC’s Global Technology & Industry Research Organization. "Smartphones have taken over from feature phones, tablet adoption is impacting PC spending, and the Cloud is affecting the traditional software, services and infrastructure markets. IT spending is still growing organically, but not at the same pace as prior to the financial crisis. Businesses are adopting IT solutions such as virtualization, automation, and SaaS as a means to reduce the annual increases in their overall IT spending at a time when economic uncertainty remains high."

The global economy has been volatile through the past 12 months, and this sense of uncertainty persisted into the first quarter of 2013. IDC expects the U.S. economy to stabilize in the second half of the year, driving IT spending growth of 5.5%. 2013 will be another tough year for Europe, however, where tech spending is expected to increase by just 2% as the Eurozone and UK struggle to shrug off the lingering debt crisis. Excluding mobile devices, growth in Europe will be less than 1%. Japan has meanwhile lost most of the post-reconstruction momentum that drove IT spending to increase by 4% in 2012, and will record IT growth of 0% this year.

"This will be another tough year for mature economies," added Minton. "Weakness in Europe, as governments continue to impose austerity measures with a direct and indirect impact on IT spending, has also damaged the export-dependent Japanese economy. The U.S. should perform better, as long as politicians continue to reach 11th-hour deals to avert an economic crisis, and the PC market in the U.S. will at least stabilize after two successive years of major declines."

Emerging markets have also been volatile in the past 12 months, with weaker economic growth in Brazil, India, and China, creating uncertainty for IT vendors. Economic projections for 2013 are generally positive, however, and IDC believes that the government in China has enough ammunition to ensure an improvement in overall growth. With penetration rates still relatively low in many segments and industrial sectors within the BRICs and other key emerging markets, a stable economic outlook will translate into improving IT spending trends.

"We’re more confident about China than we were in the middle of 2012, when PC shipments were slowing and there was a sense that the economy had slowed down more quickly than the government had planned," said Minton. "Underlying IT demand remained strong, despite the volatile capital spending patterns that mainly affected PCs, and total IT spending in China still increased by 16% last year, which was only slightly down compared to 17% growth in 2011. We expect more of the same in 2013, even in spite of the inevitable slowdown in some emerging technology adoption rates as those markets gradually mature."

Researchers at UCLA report that they have refined a method they previously developed for capturing and analyzing cancer cells that break away from patients’ tumors and circulate in the blood. With the improvements to their device, which uses a Velcro-like nanoscale technology, they can now detect and isolate single cancer cells from patient blood samples for analysis.

In recent years, a UCLA research team led by Hsian-Rong Tseng, an associate professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging and a member of both the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA and UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, has developed a "NanoVelcro" chip. When blood is passed through the chip, extremely small "hairs" — nanoscale wires or fibers coated with protein antibodies that match proteins on the surface of cancer cells — act like Velcro, traping CTCs and isolating them for analysis.

CTCs trapped by the chip also act as a "liquid biopsy" of the tumor, providing convenient access to tumor cells and earlier information about potentially fatal metastases.

Circulating tumor cells, or CTCs, play a crucial role in cancer metastasis, spreading from tumors to other parts of the body, where they form new tumors. When these cells are isolated from the blood early on, they can provide doctors with critical information about the type of cancer a patient has, the characteristics of the individual cancer and the potential progression of the disease. Doctors can also tell from these cells how to tailor a personalized treatment to a specific patient.

Histopathology — the study of the microscopic structure of biopsy samples — is currently considered the gold standard for determining tumor status, but in the early stages of metastasis, it is often difficult to identify a biopsy site. By being able to extract viable CTCs from the blood with the NanoVelcro chip, however, doctors can perform a detailed analysis of the cancer type and the various genetic characteristics of a patient’s specific cancer.

Improving the NanoVelcro device

Tseng’s team now reports that they have improved the NanoVelcro chip by replacing its original non-transparent silicon nanowire substrate inside with a new type of transparent polymer nanofiber-deposited substrate, allowing the device’s nanowires to better "grab" cancer cells as blood passes by them.

Tseng and his colleagues were able to pick single CTCs immobilized on the new transparent substrate by using a miniaturized laser beam knife, a technique called laser micro-dissection, or LMD.

The researchers’ paper on their improvement to the chip was published online Feb. 22 in the peer-reviewed journal Angewandte Chemie and is featured on the cover of the journal’s March 2013 print issue.

"This paper summarizes a major milestone in the continuous development of NanoVelcro assays pioneered by our research group," Tseng said. "We now can not only capture cancer cells from blood with high efficiency but also hand-pick single CTCs for in-depth characterization to provide crucial information that helps doctors make better decisions."

Testing the improvements on melanoma

Using the new assay on patients’ blood containing circulating melanoma cells (CMCs), Tseng’s team was able to isolate and preserve single CMCs. Melanoma is a deadly type of skin cancer that is prone to spreading quickly throughout the body. The ability to capture and preserve single CMCs allows doctors to analyze melanoma cells’ DNA structure, determine the genetic characteristics of the patient’s cancer and confirm that the circulating cells remain genetically similar to the tumor they came from.

The preservation of single captured CMCs in this proof-of-concept study also allowed researchers to conduct an analysis — called single-cell genotyping — to find within the cell a specific target (BRAF V600E) for a drug called vemurafenib. BRAF V600E is a mutation in the BRAF protein that appears in approximately 60 percent of melanoma cases. Drugs that inhibit BRAF are able to slow and often reverse the growth of melanoma tumors.

"With this technology, we are getting closer to the goal of a widely clinically applicable liquid biopsy, where we can sample cancer cells by a simple blood draw and understand the genes that allow them to grow," said Dr. Antoni Ribas, a professor of medicine in the division of hematology–oncology, a Jonsson Cancer Center member and one of Tseng’s key collaborators. "With the NanoVelcro chips, we will be able to better personalize treatments to patients by giving the right treatment to stop what makes that particular cancer grow."

Dr. Roger Lo, another key Tseng collaborator and an assistant professor in UCLA’s department of medicine, division of dermatology, and department of molecular and medical pharmacology, was also optimistic about the new method.

"This scientific advancement — being able to capture the melanoma cells in transit in the blood and then perform genetic analysis on them — will in principle allow us to track the genomic evolution of melanoma under BRAF-inhibitor therapy and understand better the development of drug resistance," said Lo, who is also a member of the Jonsson Cancer Center.

UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center has more than 240 researchers and clinicians engaged in disease research, prevention, detection, control, treatment and education.

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