Category Archives: MEMS

Imagers

Since 2010, there has been growth beyond expectations in the adoption of mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, which has called for larger volumes of CMOS image sensor chips to be produced. The resolution and miniaturization races are ongoing, and performance metrics are also becoming more stringent. In addition to the conventional pixel shrinkage, a “more than Moore” trend is increasingly evident. Resolutions of over 20 Mpixels are commercially available for mobile devices employing enhanced small-size pixels. Thanks to the innovative readout and ADC architectures embedded at the column and chip levels, data rates approaching 50Gb/s and a noise floor below single electron have been demonstrated. In addition to the conventional applications, ultra-low-power vision sensors, 3D, high-speed, and multispectral imaging are the front-running emerging technologies.

Back-side Illumination (BSI) is now the mainstream technology for high-volume, high-performance mobile applications, 1.12μm BSI pixels are available, and the industry is potentially moving towards 0.9μm pixel pitch and below. Additional innovative technologies outside of the traditional scaling include advanced 3D stacking of a specialized image sensor layer on top of deep-submicron digital CMOS (65nm 1P7M) using through silicon vias (TSVs) and micro-bumps. The importance of digital-signal-processing technology in cameras continues to grow in order to mitigate sensor imperfections and noise, and to compensate for optical limitations. The level of sensor computation is increasing to thousands of operations-per pixel, requiring high-performance and low-power digital-signal-processing solutions. In parallel with these efforts is a trend throughout the image sensor industry toward higher levels of integration to reduce system costs.

Ultra-low-power vision sensors are being reported in which more programmability and computation is performed at the pixel level in order to extract scene information such as object features and motion.

Lightfield/plenoptic commercial cameras, which have been available since 2010, are now gaining popularity and are being marketed for 3D imaging and/or all-in-focus 2D imaging. On-chip stereoscopic vision has been demonstrated through digital micro lenses (DML), paving the way to next-generation passive 3D imaging for mobile and entertainment applications, e.g. through gesture control user interfaces.

Significant R&D effort is being spent on active 3D imaging time-of-flight (TOF) applications to support requirements from autonomous driving, gaming, and industrial applications, addressing open challenges like background light immunity, higher spatial resolution, and longer distance range. Deep-submicron CMOS single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) have been developed by several groups using different technology nodes. They are now capable of meeting the requirements for high resolution, high timing accuracy by employing highly parallel time-to-digital-converters (TDCs) and small pixel pitch with better fill factor.

Ultra-high-speed image sensors for scientific imaging applications with up to 20Mfps acquisition speed have been demonstrated.

Multispectral imaging is gaining a lot of interest from the image sensor community: several research groups have demonstrated fully CMOS room-temperature THz image sensors, and a hybrid sensor capable of simultaneous visible, IR, and THz detection has been reported.

The share of CCDs continues to shrink in machine vision, compact DSC and security applications. Only for high-end digital cameras for astronomy and medical imaging do CCDs still maintain a significant market share.

Sensors & MEMS

A 4×4 array of sensing cells, developed by Dr. Peng Peng of Seagate Technology, from Flexible Microtactile Sensor for Normal and Shear Elasticity (IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics)

MEMS inertial sensors are finding widespread use in consumer applications to provide enhanced user interfaces, localization, and image stabilization. Accelerometers and gyroscopes are being combined with 3D magnetic-field sensors to form nine-degree-of-freedom devices, and pressure sensors will eventually add a 10th degree. The power consumption of such devices is becoming sufficiently low for the sensor to be on all the time, enhancing indoor navigation. There have been further advances in heterogeneous integration of MEMS with interface circuits in supporting increased performance, larger sensor arrays, reduced noise sensitivity, reduced size, and lower costs.

To address the stringent requirements of automotive, industrial, mobile, and scientific application, MEMS inertial sensors, pressure sensors and microphones are becoming more robust against electromagnetic interference (EMI), packaging parasitics, process voltage temperature (PVT) variations, humidity, and vibration.

Sensor interfaces achieve increasingly high resolution and dynamic range while maintaining or improving power or energy efficiency. This is achieved through techniques such as zooming, non-uniform quantization, and compensation for baseline values.

New calibration approaches, such as voltage calibration, are being adopted for BJT-based temperature sensors to reduce cost. In addition to thermal management applications (prevention of overheating in microprocessors and SoCs), temperature sensors are also increasingly co-integrated with other sensors (e.g. humidity, pressure, and current sensors) and MEMS resonators for cross-sensitivity compensation. Alternative temperature-sensing concepts find their way into applications with specific requirements not easily addressed by BJTs: thermal diffusivity-based sensing for high-temperature applications; thermistor-based and Q-based concepts for in-situ temperature sensing of MEMS devices and for ultra-low voltage operation.

MEMS oscillators continue to improve; phase noise is now low enough for demanding RF applications, 12kHz-to-20MHz integrated jitter is now below 0.5ps, and frequency accuracy is now better than 0.5ppm. Consumer applications are adopting new low-power and low-cost oscillators.

Biomedical

There have been continuous achievements in the area of ICs for neural and biopotential interfacing technologies. Spatial resolution of neural monitoring devices is being reduced utilizing the benefits of CMOS technology. IC providers are increasing their component offerings towards miniaturization of portable medical devices.

Telemedicine and remote-monitoring applications are expanding with support from IC manufacturing companies. The applications of such systems are not limited to services targeted for elderly or chronically ill patients; for example there are several technologies developed to enhance the way clinical trials are conducted by monitoring patient adherence and by improving data collection. Low power WiFi, and Bluetooth-low-energy is emerging as a standard wireless connection between portable communication services and wearable technology.

Smart biomolecular sensing is another major trend that marries solid-state and biochemical worlds together with the ultimate goal of enabling a more predictive and preventative medicine. With the help of the accuracy and parallelism enabled by CMOS technology, time, cost, and error rate of DNA sequencing may be significantly improved. Direct electronic readout may relax the need for complex biochemical assays. Similar trends are becoming increasingly evident in the space of proteomics and sample preparation.

Even for medical imaging, there is a trend from hospital imaging toward point-of-care and portable devices. A key example is in the space of portable high-resolution ultrasounds in which larger scientific imaging setups are being integrated onto the sensor by process technology (e.g. integrated spectral filters, CMUT). Another example is in the space of molecular imaging. The advent of silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) providing a solid-state alternative to PMTs enable the realization of PET scanners compatible with MRI, opening the way to new frontiers in the field of cancer diagnostics. More recently, SiPMs realized within deep-submicron CMOS technologies have allowed the integration at pixel- and chip-level of extra features, e.g. multiple timestamp extraction, allowing in perspective a dramatic reduction of the system cost.

Displays

The desire to put much higher-resolution and higher-definition displays into mobile applications is one of the display technology trends, and it is now opening a Full HD smartphone era.  440ppi high-definition displays are expected, even for 5-inch display sizes. Low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS) technology seems to have more merits over a-Si TFT technology. But a-Si TFT and oxide TFT technologies supported by compensating driver systems are being prepared to compete with it. Very-large-size LCD TVs over 84 inches, and UD (3840×2160) resolution are now the leading entertainment systems. 55-inch AMOLED TVs with Full HD resolution are also opening new opportunities in consumer applications.

As touch-screen displays for mobile devices become increasingly thin, capacitive touch sensors move closer to the display. The resulting in-cell touch displays come with reduced signal levels due to increased parasitics, and increased interference from the display and switched-mode chargers. Noise immunity is improved by adopting noise filtering and new signal modulation approaches.

This and other related topics will be discussed at length at ISSCC 2013, the foremost global forum for new developments in the integrated-circuit industry. ISSCC, the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, will be held on February 17-21, 2013, at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel.

Tronics to produce break-through MEMS technologyTronics has recently launched a new large-scale MEMS project to industrialize CEA-Leti’s breakthrough M&NEMS, or Micro and Nano Electro-Mechanical Systems, technology. This technology is based on piezoresistive nanowires rather than pure capacitive detection, which will advance device performance and chip size. This project sets the stage for a new generation of combo sensors for motion sensing applications.

Within two years, the team will develop 6 DOF, 9 DOF and higher DOF devices, where all sensing elements are using the same M&NEMS technology. The goal is to achieve both significant surface reduction and performance improvement of the multi-DOF sensors. Beyond the smaller die size and the ultra-low power consumption, M&NEMS technology allows manufacturing of all the sensor’s axes with one unique technology platform. This high level of integration and commonality simplifies the associated control and readout electronic circuits, both in terms of design and operational efficiency.

In addition to investments by Tronics and its partners, a substantial portion of the project’s cost is supported by a 6.5 million euros grant provided by the French Ministry of Industry within its Nanoelectronique Industrial Support program.

To generate the volumes required by consumer applications, Tronics plans to support the technology all the way to high volume eight inch production maturity.

“This is the most exciting technological endeavor I have been involved in in the last 10 years,” Peter Pfluger, CEO of Tronics, said. “This technology truly has the potential to be disruptive in the motion sensing business.”

Tier one pilot customers and well-established industrial partners are involved in the initiative, to ensure its fit with market needs and its rapid convergence to actual products. Leading ASIC suppliers are also contributing their expertise to design a motion sensor chipset that fully leverages the M&NEMS strengths. Last but not least, data fusion software specialist Movea is providing its expertise to enable advanced motion capture capabilities, such as indoor navigation and dead-reckoning.

In the second article of the MEMS new product development blog, the importance of the first prototype will be discussed. Theoretical work is valuable and a necessary step in this process but nothing shows proof of principle and sells a design like a working prototype. It’s something people can touch, observe and investigate while distracting them from doubt associated with change. Building multiple prototypes in this first phase is equally important to begin validation early and show repeatability or provide evidence to change design and process directions.

The first prototypes should include both non functional and function samples. The non functional samples are used to test one or more characteristics such as burst strength of a pressure sensor element. Fully functional samples can be used to test multiple performance interactions. An interaction is likely to include how the packaging of a MEMS device influences its accuracy or how exposure to environmental conditions affect sensor performance over life. Let’s look at a few examples of how prototypes can influence proper decision making and expedite new product development.

When working with an OEM on the development of a MEMS sensor, the team hit a road block with the customer pursuing one design direction (for very specific reasons) and the sensor team trying to make a change to improve sensor performance in fluid drainage. The sensor package had two long, narrow ports of specific diameter and the customer was resistant to change because of envelope size constraints and the need to retrofit legacy products in the field. However, the diameter of the ports was the most important factor in improving drainage. Engineers on both sides threw around theories for months with no common ground achieved before a prototype was made. Then a prototype was built with several different size ports and a drainage study was completed. A video was made showing visual evidence of the test results. It turned out that making a 2 mm increase in port diameter resulted in full drainage with gravity where the previous design held fluid until it was vigorously shook.  When the customer saw the results of the prototype testing in the video, a solution to open port diameter was reached in just a days including a method to retrofit existing products in production.   

For another application, the engineering team needed to develop a method to prevent rotation of a MEMS sensor package. The customer requested that rotation be eliminated with a key feature added at the end of a threaded port. One method to achieve this is through broaching. This method involves cutting a circular blind hole, using a secondary tool to cut the material to a slightly different shape such a hexagon and then removing the remaining chip with a post drill operation. When the idea was first introduced, most experts stated it was crazy to attempt such a feature in hardened stainless steel and no quoted the business. However, the team built a prototype to test the idea. Our first prototype successfully broached 3 holes and then the tool failed due to a large chip in the tool’s tip. The team examined the failure and learned that the chip in the tool resulted from a sharp cutting edge. The material was also suboptimal for this broaching process but it was obtained quickly. Learning from these mistakes the team chose a more robust material and slightly dulled the cutting edge. These changes improved tool life from 3 to 92 broaches. This was a significant improvement but not to the point of a robust manufacturing process. Again learning from the prototype the team saw evidence heat was playing a role in the failure. This led the team to change to a more robust lubrication (something similar to the consistency of honey). This single, additional change improved tool life from 92 to over 1100 broaches and it was learned that increased tool life could be obtained with periodic sharpening and dulling the edge slightly. With further development, over 12,000 broaches were obtained in a single sharpening with tool life lasting over 96,000 broaches. Hence a prototype quickly showed proof of concept but also led to process and tool design changes that provided a successful solution.  

The last example is of a fully functional, prototype MEMS pressure sensor. Prior to building a prototype, analytical tools such as finite element analysis were used to predict interactions between the packaging and sense element when large external loads were applied to package extremities. These models are highly complex and often misuse of the tool by non experienced users results in team skepticism of the results. Colleagues may refer to work of this nature as "pretty pictures" but not very meaningful or doubtful at best. However, when performed properly with attention to meshing, material properties, boundary conditions, applied loads and solvers accurate results can be obtained. This allows for multiple design iterations analytically prior to the first prototype to ensure the sensor has the highest probability of achieving the desired performance. After finding a design solution where the packaging had less than 0.1% influence on the MEMS sense element performance, prototypes were built to validate both the optimized (slightly higher cost, better predicted performance) and a non optimized design (lower cost, lower predicted performance).  Upon validation of both prototypes the team found over 90% correlation between experimental and theoretical results. In addition, the first prototype (although having some flaws) was very functional and performed well enough to be used in a customer validation station.  With high correlation between theory and experimentation, the once questionable results were validated as trustworthy and further FEA could be performed for design optimization.

In each of the case studies reviewed above, it was seen that early prototypes led to a wealth of information for the engineering team and proof of principle. In some cases, proof of principle is not obtained and design / process direction needs to change which is equally valuable information. The first prototypes can also be extremely valuable for influencing colleagues, customers and managers to pursue a particular design or process direction when theory can be disputed at length. In the next article of the blog, critical design and process steps that lead to successful first prototypes will be discussed.   

 

Author Biography:

David DiPaola is Managing Director for DiPaola Consulting, a company focused on engineering and management solutions for electromechanical systems, sensors and MEMS products. A 16 year veteran of the field, he has brought many products from concept to production in high volume with outstanding quality. His work in design and process development spans multiple industries including automotive, medical, industrial and consumer electronics. Previously he has held engineering management and technical staff positions at Texas Instruments and Sensata Technologies, authored numerous technical papers and holds 5 patents. To learn more, please visit www.dceams.com.  

STMicroelectronics and the University of Amsterdam Faculty of Science have announced that a sophisticated bird-tracking system developed by the university is using advanced MEMS sensing technology from ST.

Weighing as little as a 20 euro cent coin or a US quarter and smaller than a car key so as not to impede the birds’ flight, the tracking systems are sophisticated data loggers that can be attached to the back of the birds. The trackers enable valuable scientific research on bird behavior by measuring GPS position every three seconds.

“MEMS technologies are finding their way into a broad range of applications,” said Benedetto Vigna, executive vice president and general manager of ST’s Analog, MEMS and Sensors Group. “The light weight, low power, and high accuracy of the MEMS make it ideal for innovative projects like UvA’s bird tracking system to study avian migration and behavior.”

In addition to the bird’s location, determined via GPS, the tracker collects acceleration and direction data from STMicroelectronics’ LSM303DLM digital compass that integrates low-power, high-performance motion and magnetic sensing in a miniature form factor. The MEMS chip monitors the direction and vertical/horizontal orientation of the animal and can determine the body angle of birds flying in a crosswind.

“Animals have a lot to teach us and, especially as the Earth’s climate changes, there are many projects that we can undertake to study animal behavior and migration patterns,” said Prof. Dr. Ir. Willem Bouten of UvA. “STMicroelectronics is a strong partner for us in developing technologies that are suitable and adaptable to researching challenging problems that could help us address the effects of global warming and land use change.”

The tracker also contains sensors that measure both the air temperature and the internal temperature of the device. A lithium battery, charged by a high-efficient triple-junction solar cell, provides power to the system, and a ZigBee transceiver manages wireless data communication to and from the device.

Data from the trackers is currently being shared among bird-research institutes and biologists to verify computer models that predict bird behavior and migration patterns.

The bird tracking system was developed in a close collaboration of the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics and the Technology Centre both of the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam.

MEMS to track birds
The tracking system weighs a little as a US quarter and is smaller than a car key.

MEMs industry revenue forecastA strong uptake in consumer and mobile devices will power the market for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) to solid revenue growth in 2013, with breakthroughs in new sensor applications also expected this year, according to insights from the IHS iSuppli MEMS service at information and analytics provider IHS.

Overall revenue in 2013 for MEMS sensors and actuators is forecast to reach $9.09 billion, up 8.1 percent from $8.41 billion last year. This year’s expansion is perceptibly higher than the 6.1 percent increase of 2012, and growth during the next two years will be even more robust, at double-digit increases. By 2017, MEMS revenue will amount to some $12.21 billion, up more than 50 percent from 2011 levels.

The growth rate for MEMS is highly positive compared to figures reported for the overall semiconductor industry, which declined by 2.3 percent last year. But the sizable gains in MEMS are typical for an industry that sees the healthy exposure of its products in a great number of consumer and mobile devices. And among all MEMS segments including automotive, military/aerospace and medical electronics, the consumer and mobile segment is the largest MEMS sector of all.

To date, MEMS sensors like accelerometers, gyroscopes, pressure sensors and microphones can be found in an enormous array of gadgets, including smartphones and tablets, gaming consoles and handheld players, camera phones and toys. But new applications this year are also making their way into the market, helping to propel industry growth, IHS iSuppli believes.

MEMS in handsets rule

The breakthrough applications for MEMS sensors this year have mostly to do with mobile handsets and camera phones, boosting functionality and performance.

For instance, MEMS actuators will figure significantly in the auto focus and zoom features of cellphone camera modules via suppliers such as PoLight, but also aided by California-based Tessera Technologies joining the fray this year, using technology Tessera gained when it acquired Siimpel Corp. Siimpel, also from California, had originally developed the MEMS technology for camera phones. The driver here will be smartphones with imaging capabilities of more than 8 megapixels—a market worth $20 million this year but soaring to $200 million by 2016.

Good opportunities will also come about for dedicated 2-axis gyroscopes, intended for image stabilization in camera phones. Companies that will benefit include InvenSense from California, Panasonic of Japan, and Italian-French entity STMicroelectronics. Linear Hall sensors will likewise share the limelight—a boon for companies such as Allegro Microsystems from Massachusetts, Infineon of Germany, Belgian-based Melexis, Micronas of Switzerland and AKM of Japan.

Another new application for MEMS this year will take the form of pressure sensors for mobile handsets, with Samsung—not Apple—leading the way this time via its top Galaxy S III and Note II smartphones. The use case is ostensibly for height measurement in buildings to support indoor navigation, even though the infrastructure is not completely in place yet. The question for pressure sensor suppliers such as STMicroelectronics and German firm Bosch is whether Samsung will sustain its use of the function for phones—and if others will follow Samsung’s example. A cautiously positive scenario is likely, IHS iSuppli expects, with this market doubling in 2013 to $100 million.

Other MEMS areas also to thrive, but WSS could suffer

Also joining the MEMS mainstream this year will be the timing market, which has continued to grow from a small base during the last two years. Especially in the key mobile handset space, temperature-compensated crystal oscillators or TCXOs—which perform better than incumbent quartz equivalents—will come to the fore in the baseband processor/GPS chipset. Housed in extremely compact designs, the oscillators ensure high-quality data communication by reducing noise in high-speed, high-capacity wireless communications typical in smartphones. Companies like California-based SiTime Corp. and Sand 9 from Massachusetts are propelling development.

Similarly, varactors and switches used for radio-frequency (RF) antenna tuning will begin to experience some market traction in 2013, even though other technologies like gallium arsenide and ferroelectric BST are still well-placed.

In what could be a blow to the optical MEMS market, however, a new trend suggests that liquid crystal-on-silicon alternatives may be replacing MEMS-based wavelength selective switches (WSS).

How this scenario develops could have a significant negative impact on this part of the MEMS market this year, especially as WSS is currently forecast to amount to more than 50 percent of the optical MEMS space for telecoms.

 

Agilent Technologies Inc. announced yesterday the intent to donate $90 million in software to Georgia Institute of Technology, the largest in-kind software donation ever in its longstanding relationship with the university.

“Georgia Tech is among the best research universities in the world, offering the largest, most diverse electrical and computer engineering program in the United States and regularly turning out the largest number of engineers in America,” said Steve McLaughlin, chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Maintaining that position requires the best teachers and facilities and, increasingly, key partnerships with companies like Agilent. Thanks to Agilent’s support, our students now have access to the industry’s leading software and hardware tools.”

Last year, Georgia Tech dedicated a new laboratory to Agilent after the company made a substantial donation to the university’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE).

Agilent’s latest in-kind donation is valued at approximately $90 million over three years and will comprise Agilent EDA software, support and training. The donation is being given as part of the Agilent EEsof EDA University Alliance program. It includes a tailored, three-year custom license program that provides member companies of ECE’s Georgia Electronic Design Center with access to Agilent’s EEsof EDA solutions.

“This is one of the largest academic donations of Agilent EEsof products to a single institution and the largest software gift Georgia Tech has ever received,” said Todd Cutler, general manager with Agilent EEsof EDA. “We realize that universities and start-up incubator programs play a crucial role in pushing the limits of EDA tools; feedback from our partnership with Georgia Tech helps us target our development investments to make sure our products support leading-edge technology development.”

Academic uses of Agilent EDA software will focus on Agilent EEsof’s Advanced Design System and SystemVue solutions. ADS is the world’s leading electronic design automation software for RF, microwave and high-speed digital applications, pioneering innovative and commercially successful technologies such as X-parameters and 3-D electromagnetic simulators. SystemVue is Agilent’s premier platform for designing communications systems. It enables system architects and algorithm developers to innovate the physical layer of wireless and aerospace/defense communications systems and provides unique value to RF, DSP, and FPGA/ASIC implementers.

Facing a relentless onslaught from tablets, smartphones and solid state drives (SSD), global hard disk drive (HDD) market revenue in 2013 will decline by about 12 percent this year, according to an IHS iSuppli Storage Space market brief from information and analytics provider IHS (NYSE: IHS).

Revenue is set to drop to an estimated $32.7 billion in 2013, down 11.8 percent from $37.1 billion last year. HDD revenue will be flat the following year, amounting to $32.0 billion in 2014, as shown in the figure.

“The HDD industry will face myriad challenges in 2013,” said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS. “Shipments for desktop PCs will slip this year, while notebook sales are under pressure as consumers continue to favor smartphones and tablets. The declining price of SSDs also will allow them to take away some share from conventional HDDs.”

HDD gross and operating margins likewise will decline as a result of continued price erosion. “However, HDDs will continue to be the dominant form of storage this year, especially as demand for Ultrabooks picks up and hard drives remain essential in business computing,” Zhang added.

HDD vs. SSD

HDDs overall will maintain market dominance because of their cost advantage over SSDs, particularly when higher densities are involved and dollars per gigabyte are calculated. HDD costs and pricing are significantly lower than SSDs, with already falling HDD average selling prices expected to decline further this year by 7 percent.

Moreover, HDDs will continue to be part of storage solutions even in Ultrabooks that make use of an SSD component. The solution, which cobbles hard disk drives together with a so-called cache SSD module, boasts of a superior price-value proposition compared to SSD-only counterparts.

A major growth area for HDDs will be the use of hard disk drives in the business sector spanning the enterprise space, cloud storage, big data and big-data analytics. Bearing the lowest cost of any storage medium now on the market, HDDs will remain the final destination for the majority of digital content that need to be filed away. And toward the last quarter of this year, Western Digital is expected to launch a 5-terabyte Helium HDD, catering mostly to data centers for enterprise servers and storage applications, further propelling the HDD space into overdrive.

Western Digital vs. Seagate

Western Digital is expected to continue battling archrival Seagate Technology for market leadership in both revenue and shipments, especially in the enterprise business segment. While Seagate had a 50 percent share of the enterprise market last year, the introduction by Western Digital of its new helium technology could catapult the manufacturer to the top at the end of 2013, dethroning Seagate in the process.

Optical drives vs. extinction

In the parallel market for PC optical disk drives—home to discs like CDs and DVDs—losses in both revenue and shipments are similarly expected. The declines stem from a number of reasons, including smaller chassis sizes for PCs, a shift in preference among consumers toward video streaming instead of using physical discs, and cost cutting from PC manufacturers that have lost interest in using optical drives.

In what appears to be a grim scenario, the optical disk drive industry is expected to encounter continued challenges this year, such as those presented by thinner PC designs. Optical drives could eventually be abandoned by PC makers altogether.

Five University of California, Riverside professors will receive a total of $5 million as part of a $35 million research center aimed at developing materials and structures that could enable more energy efficient computers, mobile phones, and other electronic devices.

The research center, which will be called the Center for Function Accelerated nanoMaterial Engineering (FAME), will be located at UCLA and led by Jane P. Chang, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UCLA.

Four professors from UC Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering are part of the center: Alexander A. Balandin, Alexander Khitun, Jianlin Liu and Roger Lake, all of whom are part of the electrical engineering department and materials science and engineering program. Jeanie Lau, a professor of physics and astronomy who is also part of the materials science and engineering program, is the fifth professor. Each professor will receive about $1 million.

FAME is one of six new university microelectronics research centers recently established with $194 million over the next five years from the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The funding supports the continued growth and leadership of the U.S. semiconductor industry.

The other five centers will be located at UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, University of Notre Dame, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of Minnesota.

The University of Minnesota center is called the Center for Spintronic Materials, Interfaces and Novel Architectures (C-SPIN). Three UC Riverside researchers – Roland Kawakami, Ludwig Bartels and Cengiz Ozkan – received a total of $3 million as part of that center.

The goal of the FAME center is to create and investigate new nonconventional atomic scale engineered materials and structures of multi-function oxides, metals and semiconductors to accelerate innovations in analog, logic and memory devices for the semiconductor and defense industries.

The center includes 35 faculty researchers from 16 universities: UCLA, Columbia, Cornell, UC Berkeley, MIT, UC Santa Barbara, Stanford, UC Irvine, Purdue, Rice, UC Riverside, North Carolina State, Caltech, Penn, West Virginia and Yale.

Balandin, Lau and Liu will focus on van der Waals materials – a broad range of crystalline solids with layer structures. The van der Waals materials include graphene, topological insulators and charge-density wave materials. It is expected that this class of materials can be used in future information processing.

A*STAR’s Institute of Microelectronics, based in Singapore, signed an agreement to collaborate with Petroleum Geo-Services (OSE:PGS), to develop a high performance MEMS-based sensor for deep sea seismic oil and gas exploration. PGS is a geophysical company headquartered in Oslo, Norway. The MEMS sensor is targeted for incorporation into a PGS commercial streamer system, and will be used to acquire more precise seismic data during seismic survey to locate and estimate the size of offshore oil and gas reserves. The streamer systems are towed behind large ships.

Schematic illustration of a ship towing a large streamer spread with deep towing depth.

The collaboration leverages IME’s experience in designing high performance MEMS sensors, MEMS process platform and in-house packaging capability, and PGS’s expertise in seismic exploration. The project will demonstrate a MEMS sensor and provide guidelines for the packaging and integration with ASIC in the next phase.  

 “Collaborating with an industry leader provides an opportunity for us to further our research in sensing technology for oil and gas applications,” said Prof. Dim-Lee Kwong, Executive Director, IME. “IME’s integrated capabilities and deep understanding of different sensing technologies in MEMS will enhance our partner’s technology development capabilities and shorten the product development time.”

The oil and gas industry uses seismic imaging to provide 3-dimensional images showing the locations of oil and natural gas deposits. Imaging accuracy is critical to determining the optimum location for drilling to increase extraction efficiency. Two critical needs for improving image resolution and fidelity above today’s results are increasing the spatial density of sensors deployed in the field and generating ultra low noise measurements in a wider frequency band.

One of the advantages that MEMS accelerometers have over geophones is the flat frequency response at low frequencies. Unlike geophones which are velocity sensors and operate above their resonance frequencies, accelerometers operate below their resonance frequencies. The small size and lower power consumption of the sensor nodes will significantly reduce the cost of large scale deployments, enabling data from more channels to be collected, thus increasing the channel density in any given survey.

In earlier work between Shell and HP (unrelated to the A*Star/PGS announcement), a MEMS sensor was fabricated from three separate single crystal silicon wafers bonded together and singulated into a small vacuum encapsulated die. The proofmass was suspended by silicon flexures etched through the center wafer. Electrodes were arrayed on one surface of the proofmass and on the stationary wafer opposite the proofmass. A small gap was maintained between the two wafers.

memsstar Limited, a provider of etch and deposition equipment and technology solutions to manufacturers of semiconductors and micro-electrical mechanical systems (MEMS), announced two etch system order wins from new MEMS customers in Asia. memsstar recently shipped its memsstar R&D system to manufacturing customers in Korea and India for use in MEMS research and development, representing the first memsstar etch release system orders from these countries.

The R&D tool was selected by both customers for vapor phase isotropic etching of silicon for MEMS structures to support their new product development efforts. In addition to being suited to R&D applications, all memsstar’s processes are scalable for volume manufacturing using the same processing techniques, offering a process transfer and lower cost of ownership from R&D through to full scale production.

“Our proprietary memsstar systems are aggressively positioned for growth, delivering critical technological differentiators to customers engaged in MEMS etch release and surface coatings,” said Tony McKie, general manager of memsstar, Ltd. memsstar’s patented process is compatible with a wide range of metals — especially Al/alloy and other metals commonly used in MEMS mirrors and electrical contacts, while the single wafer processing platform offers excellent release etch repeatability with a wide process window to maximize performance and yield. memsstar¹s dry release etch process using hydrogen fluoride (HF), or xenon difluoride (XeF2), is unique because of its ability to eliminate stiction in a single process.