Category Archives: MEMS

October 26, 2012 – Communications applications are far and away the leading growth market for ICs over the next five years, and PCs and consumer applications have fallen far back in the pack.

IC Insights projects a 7.4% compound annual growth rate for total IC sales from 2011-2016. That’s largely because of good growth in the communications end market (14.1% CAGR) which will nearly double the entire IC market over the period — and nearly double in size to $160B by 2016. The Asia-Pacific region will see the lion’s share (61%) of this year’s comm IC sales, up from 59% in 2011.

Also ahead of the curve is the automotive IC market (9.0% CAGR), pegged to surge to $28B in 2016, 53% bigger than where it was in 2011. Europe has been the big market in that sector, accounting for 37% of sales in 2012 — but by 2016 the Asia-Pacific market will be nearly equal in size, IC Insights projects.

Another emerging sector is medical/industrial applications, within which is an aging global population requiring home healthcare as well as other industrial applications. Analog ICs will continue to dominate here (45% of total in 2012, and still the largest in 2016). The government/military IC market will reach $2.46B by 2016 but still be a tiny slice of the total market (<1%).

IC market growth forecast by application, 2011-2016 CAGR. (Source: IC Insights)

The two slowest sectors are the ones which have fallen the farthest from grace. Computer IC sales will drop to 34% of the total market in 2012 vs. nearly 42% in 2011. This year’s -9% drop in computer IC sales is due to a -12% decline in memory sales. And consumer ICs will register just 1.9% CAGR from 2011-2016. Japan was "once the stronghold of the consumer electronics business," points out the analyst firm, but in 2012 it will hold less than half the share of the consumer IC market vs. the Asia Pacific region (22% to 50%).

IC Insights had already been predicting that communications will usurp computers as the biggest application for leading-edge ICs. Comm will be the biggest end-use IC app in every major geographic region starting in 2014. Communications accounted for 31% of worldwide IC sales, vs. 41.7% for computers; the analyst firm sees them swapping to 42.2% and 34.0% by 2016.

(Source: IC Insights)

In fact, telecom apps are already the biggest growth areas for ICs, notes IC Insights. In 2012 the top three growth areas are all telecom, and thanks to application-specific processors used in smartphones and tablet computers. Also note that NAND flash continues to grow, though at much slower rates due to a surge in capacity (and vendors) and subsequently lower pricing pressures. Auto is a top market in 2012 as ell, thanks to needed functions such as self-parking systems, stability control, and collision avoidance.


Top growing IC markets (in revenue growth), 2010-2012F. (Source: IC Insights)

Note that the lines are blurring with every new generation of technology — what counts as a consumer device, or a business application, or communications usage. "It is getting more difficult to keep nice matter-of-fact demarcations between the products," acknowledges IC Insights president Bill McClean. "We are classifying by type of product and not really who is the end user." That puts smartphones in the "communications" category because it’s a type of cellphone, whatever else they are capable of doing and are used for. Consumer gear, then, means systems including TVs, stereo equipment, iPods, etc., he explains. Tablets are a form of PCs so they are included as computers, though some market watchers (particularly for early versions) ranked them as personal media devices.

October 22, 2012 – In case anyone needed a reminder or a wake-up, new data from SEMI reiterates chip tool sales are slumping badly in the latter part of this year.

Worldwide orders reported by North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment totaled $952.0M in September, -15% from August’s revised $1.12B level, but 2.8% higher than the same month a year ago. Billings similarly were down from August (-12% to $1.18B), but they’re also down -10.4% from a year ago.

The first half of the year was pretty good for semiconductor equipment demand, raising hopes of at least some minor full-year growth after a disappointing 2011 (particularly in the fall). It’s increasingly clear now, though, that the second half of 2012 is suffering from another investment slowdown. "In the current cycle, device makers are grappling with lower average selling prices and uncertainty with the broader economy, which clearly has a near-term impact on equipment purchases," noted Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI.

In the four months since peaking in May, equipment bookings have declined -40%, and are now right around where they were in the trough of Sept-Oct 2011, which was a two-year low point. Sales aren’t off by as much (-23%) but the dollar amount is also at the 3Q11 trough level. The B:B ratio has been plummeting since April when it was well above the parity level (1.12); it’s now at 0.81, meaning $81 worth of product orders are coming in for every $100 of equipment sold.

For the nine months through September, equipment orders tracked by SEMI are down -7% from the same period in 2011 to $11.9B. Sales are down -15% at $12.3B. SEMI’s official forecast, originally issued at SEMICON West, predicts an overall -2.6% decline for the year in global frontend + backend equipment.

Industry watchers and chipmakers were expecting a soft 3Q12, but holding out hopes for 4Q12 and especially 2013. Intel didn’t help with either timeframe in its 3Q12 results, when it announced lower overall 2012 capex and utilization rates slashed to 50% — and refused to forecast into 2013 spending due to visibility concerns, just two months away.

October 16, 2012 – SEMI has extended the call for papers for the 2013 China Semiconductor Technology International Conference (CSTIC) to October 22. Paper abstract guidelines are listed here, and SEMI says there remain "just a few openings" for proposed talks on semiconductor technology and manufacturing. Original and overview papers from integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), equipment/materials suppliers, and academic and research institutes are welcomed.

The CSTIC (March 17-18 in Shanghai), held in conjunction with SEMICON China (March 19-21), is the largest annual semiconductor technology conference for the industry in China. (Last year’s CSTIC featured 100 technical lectures, 300 speakers, and nearly 1000 attendees.) Confirmed plenary speakers for CSTIC 2013 are RPI prof and Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever, and "father of SOI technology" Ghavam Shahidi, IBM Fellow and director of Silicon Technology at IBM.

The CSTIC program offers 10 symposia covering all aspects of semiconductor technology and manufacturing, including a just-announced new track covering "circuit design, system integration and applications." Other tracks include: device engineering and technology; lithography and patterning; dry & wet etch and cleaning; thin-film technology; CMP, wafer substrate polishing and post-polish cleaning; materials and process integration for device and interconnection; packaging and assembly; metrology, reliability and testing; emerging semiconductor technologies; and advances in MEMS and sensor technologies.

SEMI and ECS are the organizers along with China’s High-Tech Expert Committee (CHTEC) with co-sponsors IEEE, MRS, and the China Electronics Materials Industry Association.

October 16, 2012 – The Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) says it has formed a Technology Steering Committee to help address key business and technology areas of interest to its members, and "encourage the advancement and adoption of leading technology and practices."

The committee will meet quarterly to "provide general oversight and guidance to the GSA’s working groups, committees, and research and events, as it pertains to key technological trends and their implications on the technology ecosystem," according to the GSA. The committee also will be charged with keeping the GSA’s focus aligned with key technologies and practices having the most positive impact on its members. Topics range from the technologically specific such as 3D IC packaging (for which the GSA has had a working group since 2009) to broader themes such as taxation and education.

The steering committee is chaired by Open Silicon top exec Naveed Sherwani, and seats representatives from two dozen companies spanning the fabless, foundry, and equipment supplier sectors: Altera, Applied Materials, ASE, Amkor, Cadence, CSR, eSilicon, GlobalFoundries, IBM, IDT, Intersil, LSI, Microsemi, Open-Silicon, PMC-Sierra, Rambus, SanDisk, Silicon Labs, SMIC, Spreadtrum, SuVolta, Synopsys, and TSMC.

The Technology Steering Committee is expected to help companies across the semiconductor ecosystem "address business and technology concerns specifically, where they intersect and their implications in this industry," stated Jodi Shelton, co-founder and president of GSA. "The committee will support, encourage and promote entrepreneurship, as well as accelerate industry adoption of emerging technologies and practices that are most significant to GSA members and their constituents."

The first TSC meeting was held Aug 8 at Open Silicon in Milpitas, CA, site of all the quarterly meetings. The next one is scheduled for Nov. 7.

Update 10/16: Jodi Shelton summed up the reason and timing for the formation of this steering committee: "The participants within the Technology Steering Committee are all senior technical executives with tremendous visibility and insight into the trends of the industry. We simply want to leverage this visibility and insight." Forming a steering committee to oversee the GSA’s working groups helps "bring in fresh perspectives from a different angle" and keep momentum moving forward, she explained.

Takeaways from that inaugural TSC meeting were to decide on key areas of focus, key individual technology & broader topics toward which the TSC will be "steering" the GSA’s efforts:

– 2.5-3D. Technical readiness (e.g. EDA, equipment, I/O standards, etc.); supply chain optimization (e.g. foundries want complete ownership to guarantee yields, but others may want to add their own disintegrated portion of expertise); and collaborative innovation (who will create and own IPs/standards, profit and loss sharing).

– Beyond Moore. Roadmap challenges for 450mm wafer manufacturing (what the ecosystem needs to do to support this); technologies beyond CMOS and NAND; trends on cost and power; the effect of silicon convergence (integrating large systems, EDA challenges, what is the FPGA component, etc.); the roles of FinFETs and 3D wafers; how Beyond Moore can be effected with a limited number of players in fab development, and how this will effect fab development costs; will this drive further industry consolidation or opportunities for micro fabs; managing package equivalence and system costs, reference designs, software, support, etc.

– IP. How can a limited number of vendors enable more shuttle and support, process, non-essential IP; make finding the right IP easier — if it exists; packaging and transferring quality; verifying IP, making it portable and usable.

– More than Moore/Innovation in Legacy Nodes. What’s the solution for low-cost, heterogeneous integration for MEMS, simple analog blocks, and other drivers that may not necessarily scale to Moore’s Law? (e.g. 2D-2.5D-3D, which may or may not include TSVs) And how can the GSA’s working groups determine ways to improve efficiencies and innovations at the ≥90nm nodes, and leverage existing technology to support emerging markets?

by Mark Danna, VP of business development, Owens Design

Continuing a series of columns for SST, Mark Danna from Owens Design highlights common mistakes that can cause an outsourced partnership to fail and detail a methodology for approaching an outsourcing agreement that can minimize the risk and costs involved and help ensure a successful partnership.

October 12, 2012 – One of the toughest things about getting started on a tool development design and build project is that in most cases the overall requirements for tool functionality and performance have not been focused yet. Nevertheless, the group tasked with tool development responsibility is told to get moving on the project because "we are already late." In fact, from the point of view of most of those involved, the picture of what is needed is still kind of fuzzy and none of the critical details are well-defined.

It is, however, possible to launch the project, get it off the ground, and make progress while still clarifying tool specifications and requirements. A disciplined phased approach to the program can resolve many of these open issues (technical, commercial and market-related) in the first phase of any project.

For example, at the start of most tool development projects there usually is a gap between desired tool functionality and target tool cost. The engineers want to design the tool to meet all potential market requirements and perform at the highest level. The marketing group wants a tool that meets a specific set of market requirements and can be produced at the lowest cost possible. Very early in the program a functional/cost trade-off analysis needs to be done — and well understood — by both parties before tool specifications and performance can be agreed upon and finalized. One of the most critical parts of finalizing the tool specification is to really understand how the functionality of the tool will be validated at the end of the program. Without an agreed-upon functionality test, tool performance cannot be validated and the specification is meaningless.

Unfortunately, not all tool functionality can be nailed down in the first phase of the tool development project. For some projects, it is standard procedure for final tool production launch to begin before the overall tool characterization has been completed. During this process, if overall tool functionality changes significantly, tool specification changes are the inevitable result and most likely will affect overall tool design. Going into this phase with a tool design that can accommodate a wide range of design parameters can minimize the risk of a total design restart. The trade-off, of course, is that this increase in functionality will most likely lead to an increase in overall tool cost. By thinking about these potential issues early on, it may be possible to minimize the impact of design-related change by having the ability to easily change the design to meet the tool requirements once overall tool functionality has been solidified.

A lack of clarity early on in design requirement can exist whether the project is handled as an in-house development project or is outsourced. If it’s an outsourced project, the selection of a design-and-build partner and its ability to help clarify and focus the development effort is critical to the overall success of the program. While there is always a desire in a tight economy to keep as many costs in-house as possible, the money spent engaging the right outsource design-and-build partner at the beginning is likely to end up benefiting the project budget long-term. Where a typical equipment OEM may produce a new tool every couple of years, a good outsource partner might go through this development process 10-20 times per year. As a result, this outsource design-and-build partner will have established and proven procedures that can take that fuzzy picture at the beginning of the project and put it into focus.

Time must be committed early in the development phase of a project to bring the fuzzy parameters into focus. Tool cost vs. functionality trade-offs must be well understood by all stake holders. By leveraging either in-house or outside expertise in project planning and management, as well as design input from the very beginning, one can end up saving a lot of time, money, and aggravation.

Mark Danna is VP for new business development at Owens Design.

October 11, 2012 – High pricing and ineffective marketing, in a consumer market fighting for attention against hot-selling mobile devices, are weighing down expectations for ultrabook demand — but the future’s still bright with new models promising more tablet- and smartphone-like features.

IHS iSuppli has slashed its estimates for 2012 ultrabook shipments to 10.3M units (with hopes of half of them coming in 4Q12), down from 22M units earlier this year. The firm also has lowered its outlook for 2013 ultrabook shipments, to 44M units from 61M units. (Part of this forecast-lowering is a classification issue: Intel’s rigid definition of what qualifies as an "ultrabook" has redefined many notebooks as "ultrathins," iSuppli notes.)

1Q12 2Q12 3Q12 4Q12 1Q13 2Q13 3Q13 4Q13
714 1,540 2,692 5,392 8,752 9,806 11,473 14,297

Forecasted global ultrabook unit shipments, in thousands of units. (Source: IHS iSuppli)

So far, the PC industry has failed to create the kind of buzz and excitement among consumers that is required to propel ultrabooks into the mainstream," noted Craig Stice, senior principal analyst for compute platforms at IHS. "This is especially a problem amid all the hype surrounding media tablets and smartphones."

The other sticking point for ultrabooks: pricing. Systems need to get from today’s ~$1000 levels to below the $600 threshold to achieve mainstream-friendly volumes. Ramping up sales for 2013 especially will depend on this, while also incorporating the new Windows 8 operating system as well as attractive features (read: expected by consumers) such as touchscreens. If they don’t, they’ll continue to face an uphill battle, in a persistently languishing economy against a growing roster of lower-priced tablets and smartphones (iPhone 5, Kindle Fire HD, forthcoming Microsoft Surface).

Intel seems to be focusing its attention on the mid-2013 introduction of its Haswell chip, which it hopes will "catalyze[e] the ultrabook revolution" with improved performance, lower power consumption, security features, and support for multiple displays and high-definition monitors, iSuppli notes. At the recent Intel Developer Forum, the chipmaking giant reportedly mapped out 40 ultrabook designs in progress with touchscreens, and showed survey results indicating consumers prefer touchscreens 80% of the time. Ultrabooks with convertible form factors — e.g. with a detachable touchscreen, usable either as a traditional clamshell laptop or as a tablet — offer the best of both worlds.

Ultrabooks: Key market for motions sensors

One component sector that’s counting on that ultrabook demand to materialize is motion sensors. Various accelerometers, gyroscopes and compasses will be required to deliver the new features promised in new ultrabooks, from gaming to indoor navigation to augmented reality. IHS iSuppli projects an eye-popping 14-fold growth for motion sensor sales over the next four years to $117.3M, up from just $8.3M in 2012 — that’s a 93% CAGR. Before ultrabooks, the only motion sensors found in notebooks were accelerometers used to identify if the unit was dropped, to trigger protection of the hard-disk drive’s read/write head. With more solid-state devices (SSD) being used in notebooks, that functionality isn’t needed, notes iSuppli.

But the new ultrabooks do use accelerometers for functions such as auto screen rotation, and will employ compasses and gyroscopes to detect direction and motion — functions already common in games for tablets and smartphones. While Intel had originally asserted that it wouldn’t make sense to incorporate such motion sensors into conventional ultrabooks, the planned future convertible/detachable ultrabook models will indeed require them, points out Jérémie Bouchaud, director and senior principal analyst for MEMS and sensors at IHS. And that’s the kind of assured end market that component suppliers need.

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016
0.4 8.3 32.8 60.2 92.3 117.3

 Forecast of global motion sensor revenues in ultrabooks. (Source: IHS iSuppli)

Semiconductor technology is increasingly being implemented in a variety of healthcare applications. At the recent imec International Technology Forum Press Gathering in Leuven, Belgium, imec CEO Luc Van den hove outlined uses in blood cell sorting, mobile apps for personalized medicine (such as brain monitoring of EEG activity), and advanced bio research.

“The cost of healthcare is exploding,” he said, noting that one in three people will develop diabetes in their lifetime. It is estimated that the cost of treating diabetes patients will exceed $500 billion 20 years from now (for U.S. and Europe). “This number is larger than the entire turnover of the entire semiconductor industry today,” vVan den hove said. “The cost of treating heart diseases will be even more than triple that. These numbers are really frightening and the problem is tremendous.”

Presently, today’s healthcare system is relatively inefficient. “We are treating illnesses with generic treatments which are optimized for the average population of patients, sometimes leading to overconsumption, sometimes under consumption,” said Van den hove. “We go to the doctor when it’s too late, when symptoms occur. Often, the treatments will be more expensive. If we implement a more proactive way to perform healthcare, it would be much more effective.. It is really time for a change here. We need to implement this vision of more personalized, more preventive, predictive and participative healthcare system,” he said.

Van den hove believes the healthcare system will soon see the kind of evolution of that the semiconductor industry has witnessed. “We have created this fabulous revolution in compute power. We went from mainframe to desktop type systems to a computer in our pocket that is more powerful than a mainframe computer we were using 20 years ago. We’re convinced that we will see a similar revolution in the domain of medical diagnostics,” said Van den hove. “We are clearly at a turning point and we will go from these very sophisticated clinical labs with big medical analysis tools to tools that will be implemented on a doctor’s desk, eventually to tools we will be using in our homes which are add-ons to our smart phones, which will allow us to do part of the analysis at home. We are convinced that if you combine that capabilities of semiconductor technology with the know-how that is available in the medical profession, we can come up with solutions that are more sustainable.”

One cornerstone of such a medical system will be early diagnostics. One example is the early detection of cancer cells in blood. “Typically today, when you have a primary tumor, it will spread out tumor cells that will circulate through the blood and will create secondary tumors that are usually the more fatal ones. If we can find a way to detect those circulating those tumor cells in the blood in an easy way, then we can come up with a way to detect cancer at an early stage,” Van den hove said.

The challenge is huge: one has to have the ability to detect one bad tumor cell in 5 billion blood cells. This equate to a requirement to detect 20 million cells per second. “This is a real challenge, but the parallelism that can be realized with semiconductor technology is a tremendous opportunity. We can fabricate thousands of those parallel circuits on one device. This will allow us to create this kind of sensitivity,” he said. “The system we are building here is a combination of very sophisticated microfluidics, electronics and very sophisticated on-chip imaging. We also require a lot of compute power because we have to analyze 20 million images per second. It will become possible to realize these kinds of detection systems.”

The second pillar of a sustainable healthcare system, according to imec, is mobile diagnostics that will allow patients to be monitored in their homes and also better access to healthcare in places that are difficult to reach.

One example of such a device under development at imec is smart health patches. We’ve been working on these technologies now for several years and one of the key aspects of it today is that we are trying to measure multiple parameters with one health patch – not only heartbeat, but skin temperature, skin conductance and chemical sensing. We’ve developed several prototypes of these kinds of devices over the years, refined the prototypes and we’re now doing clinical trials, both for cardiac monitoring and monitoring of epileptic patients. We have also been developing further versions of the wireless EEG concept,” Van den hove said.

A third pillar of such a sustainable healthcare system will be personalized therapy which could lead to the discover of cures of illnesses that are now uncurable.  “It will at some time, a few years from now, be possible to cure diabetes patients by replacing their failed pancreas cells with new cells, reprogrammed based on their own stem cells,” said Van den hove. “We are developing bio-reactors in order to realize that, in which cells and tissues can be grown in a more controlled way. By realizing a two-way communication between the tissue and the cells that grow on it, we can indeed control the growth of this tissue. We’re doing that by using the multi-electrode arrays that we have developed for cell recording.”

Caption: CMOS chip with a matrix of micronails with various dimensions, packaged in a dish suitable for cell cultures. With these micronail-electrodes individual cells can be stimulated and recorded. This platform for two-way electrical communication can be an interesting instrument for research on in-vitro cell cultures (e.g. Alzheimer research; drug development).

Van den hove said one way to realize personalized diagnostics is also to tune the treatment based on, for example, information that can be obtained from DNA sequencing. “This will also be an application where we will need a lot of compute power in order to realize it. We’re working in our high performance computing program together with several partners on solutions for these applications,” he said. “Technologies that are enabled through progress in semiconductors, combined with the knowledge of the medical experts, will indeed allow us to implement a more sustainable healthcare system.”

One example of a future healthcare concept is called “Guardian Angel Devices,” a new program (in which imec is involved) that will develop technologies for extremely energy-efficient, smart, electronic personal companions that will assist humans from infancy to old age. These devices will be private and secure systems featuring sensing beyond human capabilities, computation, and communication, The angel devices will be developed using advanced semiconductor and nanotechnology, such as that shown below (captured from the video on the project’s website).  

 

Related articles: TEL and imec extend partnership into life science related research, EEG headset prototype developed

Tokyo Electron (TEL) and imec announce the participation of TEL in imec’s bio-research program Human++. The agreement includes collaboration on bio-sensors and specialty imaging.   

One of the research tracks within imec’s Human++ program is the development of next-generation platforms, for automated cell inspection methods in order to create pluripotent stem cells in clinical grade. The agreement between TEL and imec includes the development of high-quality imagers and sensors for a platform for inspection of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (IPSCs). A compact lens-free imager will be developed at imec to monitor IPSC colonies, and a silicon photonics biosensor to quantify biomolecules involved in stem cell proliferation.

To further strengthen their collaboration, TEL will participate in imec’s resident researcher program and send, for the first time, a researcher to imec for joint research in the life science field.

“By participating in imec’s "Human++" program, TEL believes it will be possible to apply the technological strengths and expertise—both tangible and intangible—it has gained in the semiconductor production equipment business to the life science field. Imec’s extensive multidisciplinary track record is expected to be the ideal breeding ground to develop new technologies supporting next-generation life science solutions,” said Yoshio Kinoshita. “Moreover, imec’s unique environment of a semiconductor cleanroom combined with biolabs and a multidisciplinairy team of engineers, physicists, biomedical and chemical scientists, allows in-house cultivation of stem cell colonies, biochemistry development, and in-house testing with biological molecules and stem cell colonies.”

“Imec’s vision on future healthcare is one of high-quality and affordable diagnosis and treatment. We want to advance that vision by providing innovative top-notch electronics solutions to our partners,” said Peter Peumans, director life sciences program at imec. “I am delighted with this new agreement, broadening our collaboration scope with TEL from semiconductor technologies to life sciences. This collaboration endorses our expertise in life sciences and the value of our offering to TEL throughout our long-term strategic collaboration in the framework of imec’s advanced lithography affiliation program.”

Imec, Holst Centre and Panasonic have developed a new prototype of a wireless EEG (electroencephalogram) headset. The system combines ease-of-use with ultra-low power electronics. Continuous impedance monitoring and the use of active electrodes increases the quality of EEG signal recording compared to former versions of the system. The data are transmitted in real-time to a receiver located up to 10m from the system. The realization of this prototype is a next step towards reliable high-quality wearable EEG monitoring systems.

The system integrates circuit level components including imec’s active electrodes and EEG amplifier together with a microcontroller and a low power radio. It is capable of continuously recording 8 channel EEG signals while concurrently recording electrode-tissue contact impedance (ETI). This simultaneous ETI recording enables continuous, remote assessment of electrode contact status during EEG recording. The active electrodes reduce the susceptibility of the system to power-line interference and cable motion artifacts, thus improving signal quality. The system can be configured at run-time to change the settings of the recordings such as the number of channels, or enabling/disabling the impedance recording. The autonomy of the system ranges from 22 hours (8 channels of EEG with ETI) to 70 hours (1 channel of EEG only).

The system has a high common-mode rejection ratio (>92 dB), low noise (<6 µVpp, 0.5-100Hz), DC offset tolerance of +/- 900mV and is AC coupled with configurable cut-off frequency.  Sensitivity and dynamic range are configurable through a programmable gain stage (default 1.5mVpp and 366nV, respectively).The system (with dry electrodes and no skin preparation) is validated against a commercially available wired reference system (with wet electrodes and skin preparation), comparing the spectra between 1 and 30Hz. The high correlation coefficients (ranging from 0.81to 0.98 in four 1-minute recordings with eyes open) indicate that both systems have similar performance.

The heart of the system is the low-power (750µW) 8-channel EEG monitoring chipset. Each EEG channel consists of two active electrodes and a low-power analog signal processor. The EEG channels are designed to extract high-quality EEG signals under a large amount of common-mode interference. The active electrode chips have buffer functionality with high input impedance (1.4GΩ at 10Hz), enabling recordings from dry electrodes, and low output impedance reducing the power-line interference without using shielded wires

The system is integrated into imec’s EEG headset with dry electrodes, which enables EEG recordings with minimal set-up time. The small size of the electronics system, measuring only 35mm x 30mm x 5mm (excl battery), allows easy integration in any other product.

October 8, 2012 – Sensirion AG says it will debut at Electronica 2012 (Nov. 13-16, Munich, Germany) what it says is the world’s smallest humidity and temperature sensor: a 2mm × 2mm × 0.8mm in size, based on its CMOSens technology that combines the sensor and signal processing on a single chip.

The tiny SHTC1 humidity and temperature sensor is specifically designed for mobile devices where size is a critical factor, the company explains. It measures humidity over a range of 0-100 %RH ±3 %RH accuracy), and measures temperatures from -30°C to +100°C (±0.3°C accuracy). The fully calibrated sensor has a digital I2C interface and is suitable for reflow soldering — making it compatible with standard industrial mass production processes for electronic modules. More details are available on the company’s Web site.)

The Swiss sensor manufacturer supplies CMOS-based sensor components and systems. CMOSens technology uses intelligent system integration, including calibration and digital interfaces.