Category Archives: MEMS

In the world of optical defect inspection, finding on defect on a 300mm wafer can be like trying to find a single coin on the island of Taiwan. Now imagine being able to find that coin in just an hour, along with any other coins that look exactly like it. That’s exactly what NanoPoint will allow manufacturers to do.

KLA-Tencor’s NanoPoint is a new family of patented technologies for its 2900 series defect inspection system.

“[NanoPoint is] a new algorithm,” said Satya Kurada, product marketing manager at KLA-Tencor. “We now have the ability to generate care areas significantly smaller to inspect smaller areas, and remove noise from the pattern of interest. This will focus inspection resources on critical patterns.”

KLA-Tencor believes that NanoPoint represents an entirely new way to discover and monitor defects, at optical speed and on existing optical defect inspection equipment. By automatically generating millions of very tiny care areas based on user-defined patterns of interest, NanoPoint focuses the resources of the optical inspection system on critical patterns, as identified either by circuit designers or by known defect sites. During chip development, NanoPoint can reveal the need for mask re-design within hours, potentially accelerating the identification and resolution of design issues from months to days. During volume production, NanoPoint can selectively track defectivity within critical patterns—allowing process monitoring with sensitivity and speed far beyond the industry’s experience to date.

“This is a huge shift in the strategy of what customers could potentially do,” said Kurada. “This technology basically has our customer off-loading the e-beam, because of the sensitivity of which they could with this.”

Traditional e-beam approaches have worked very well, said Kurada, but e-beam optical inspection runs into challenges with wafer processing.

“Because we’re packing so much more tightly, defects that used to be non-nuisance are becoming yield killers,” said Kurada. “Traditional methods are having trouble finding these now. NanoPoint’s evolution is based on canceling out the noise to find the defects. Now it is using pattern-based inspection.”

Pattern-based optical inspection can identify all the weak points, said Kurada, because it identifies patterned noise maps. This allows for not only a cleaner inspection of tinier areas, but a faster completion time as well. What used to seven days, Kurada says will now only take one hour.

“Our customers are highly motivated to continue to extend optical inline defect inspection beyond the 20nm node,” said Keith Wells, vice president and general manager of the Wafer Inspection (WIN) Division at KLA-Tencor. “They want the speed and baseline preservation that only optical inspection can provide—and our challenge is to design equipment that can discover defects whose size is further and further below the inspection wavelength. In the past, we have offered various improvements to the light source, optics and other subsystems, but NanoPoint addresses the issue from a new angle. Based on customer feedback, I believe that NanoPoint is a breakthrough technology with the potential for applicability across a broad range of layers and process modules.”

Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments decreased during the first quarter 2013 when compared to fourth quarter 2012 area shipments, according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) in its quarterly analysis of the silicon wafer industry.

Total silicon wafer area shipments were 2,128 million square inches during the most recent quarter, a 1.6 percent decrease from the 2,162 million square inches shipped during the previous quarter. New quarterly total area shipments are 4.8 percent higher than first quarter 2012 shipments.

"Total silicon shipment volumes experienced typical first quarter weakness, although volumes are up relative to the same quarter last year” said Byungseop (Brad) Hong, chairman of SEMI SMG and director of Global Marketing at LG Siltron. “Given current expectations for modest growth for the semiconductor industry this year, we are hopeful that the silicon industry will follow suit.”

Quarterly Silicon Area Shipment Trends

Semiconductor Silicon Shipments* – Millions of Square Inches

    Q1 2012    Q4 2012    Q1 2013 
  Total   2,033 2,162

2,128

*Shipments are for semiconductor applications only and do not include solar applications

Silicon wafers are the fundamental building material for semiconductors, which in turn, are vital components of virtually all electronics goods, including computers, telecommunications products, and consumer electronics. The highly-engineered thin round disks are produced in various diameters (from one inch to 12 inches) and serve as the substrate material on which most semiconductor devices or "chips" are fabricated.

All data cited in this release is inclusive of polished silicon wafers, including virgin test wafers, epitaxial silicon wafers, and non-polished silicon wafers shipped by the wafer manufacturers to the end-users.

The Silicon Manufacturers Group acts as an independent special interest group within the SEMI structure and is open to SEMI members involved in manufacturing polycrystalline silicon, monocrystalline silicon or silicon wafers (e.g., as cut, polished, epi, etc.). The purpose of the group is to facilitate collective efforts on issues related to the silicon industry including the development of market information and statistics about the silicon industry and the semiconductor market.

SEMI is the global industry association serving the nano- and microelectronics manufacturing supply chains. SEMI’s 1,900 member companies are the engine of the future, enabling smarter, faster and more economical products that improve our lives. SEMI maintains offices in Bangalore, Beijing, Berlin, Brussels, Grenoble, Hsinchu, Moscow, San Jose, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C.  For more information, visit www.semi.org.

Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today announced the second phase of the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI). For this phase, SRC and NIST will provide a combined $5 million in annual funding for three multi-university research centers tasked with demonstrating non-conventional, low-energy technologies that outperform current technologies on critical applications in 10 years and beyond.

The second phase of NRI also features joint projects with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the multi-university research network involves 34 universities in 17 states. The three research centers are:

  • the Institute for Nanoelectronics Discovery and Exploration (INDEX) at SUNY’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE);
  • the Center for Nanoferroic Devices (CNFD) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln; and
  • the South West Academy of Nanoelectronics (SWAN) 2.0 at the University of Texas at Austin.

“In 2012, the first phase of NRI culminated with a comprehensive assessment of the various NRI device concepts through performance benchmarking,” said Tom Theis, the new SRC program executive director. “NRI 2.0 will focus on key research opportunities identified in the benchmarking study and will explore the ultimate scalability of emerging digital device concepts and their functionality beyond digital logic. For example, researchers will explore magnetoelectric devices that promise improved energy efficiency and the ability to combine memory and logic.”

NIST will provide $2.6 million to the effort each year for up to five years, matched by $2.4 million each year from NRI. NRI is made up of participants from the semiconductor industry including GLOBALFOUNDRIES, IBM, Intel, Micron Technology and Texas Instruments.

“NIST collaborations with the NRI are one of the fastest ways to move pre-competitive technology forward,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and Director of NIST Patrick Gallagher. “We’re excited to see what innovative nanoelectronic devices and concepts the next phase of this partnership with SRC will produce.”

Additional universities involved in the NRI network include:

  • INDEX at SUNY’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE): Purdue, Virginia, Cornell, Georgia Institute of Technology and Columbia.
  • CNFD at University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Wisconsin-Madison, Oakland, SUNY Buffalo, UC Irvine, Delaware.
  • SWAN 2.0 at University of Texas at Austin: UT Dallas, North Carolina State, Texas A&M, UC San Diego, Stanford and Harvard.

In collaboration with the National Science Foundation, NRI also supports Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Teams (NIRTs) as part of the National Nanotechnology Initiative’s Signature Initiative "Nanoelectronics for Beyond 2020.” Funding for these projects flows to many other leading U.S. universities.

NRI 2.0 is the successor to an earlier multi-year collaboration between NRI and NIST that focused on the long-term goal of “developing the next logic switch,” or the basic logic elements that serve as the building blocks of electronic devices. The NRI initiative was originally launched by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) in 2005. The NRI and the collaboration with NIST are managed by the Nanoelectronics Research Corporation (NERC), a special purpose subsidiary of SRC, the world’s leading university-research consortium for semiconductors and related technologies.

The Nanoelectronics Research Initiative is one of three research program entities of SRC aimed at extending the frontiers of semiconductor electronics.

Element Six last week announced, in collaboration with Delft University of Technology, the entanglement of electron spin qubits (quantum bits) in two synthetic diamonds separated in space. This breakthrough is a major step toward achieving a diamond-based quantum network, quantum repeaters and long-distance teleportation—changing the way information is processed and enabling new systems to efficiently tackle problems inaccessible by today’s information networks and computers.

The collaboration, used two synthetic diamonds of millimeter-size that were grown by Element Six through chemical vapor deposition (CVD). The synthetic diamonds were engineered to contain a particular defect that can be manipulated using light and microwaves. The defect consists of a single nitrogen atom adjacent to a missing carbon atom—known as a nitrogen vacancy (NV) defect. The light emitted from the NV defect allows the defect’s quantum properties to be “read-out” using a microscope. By forming small lenses around the NV defect and carefully tuning the light emitted through electric fields, the Delft team was able to make the two NV defects emit indistinguishable particles of light (photons). These photons contained the quantum information of the NV defect and further manipulation allowed the quantum mechanically entanglement of the two defects.

“Element Six’s synthetic diamond material has been at the heart of these important quantum mechanics developments, which promise to revolutionize information technologies,” said Ronald Hanson, professor at Delft University of Technology. “Building on three years of collaboration, our research partnership has been critical in overcoming one of the greatest challenges of our time—finding and controlling a physical system suitable for fulfilling the promises of quantum entanglement. This is an important achievement that will help us not only create a quantum network to process information, but ultimately a future quantum computer.”

The entanglement process, which Einstein called “spooky action at a distance,” is a process where the two NV defects become strongly connected such that they are always correlated irrespective of the distance between them. The findings, published in this week’s issue of “Nature,” are a major leap forward for quantum science and demonstrate Element Six’s ability to control a single atom-like defect in the diamond lattice at the parts per trillion level. It is the first time that qubits in two separated diamonds have been entangled and subsequently shown to behave as a single particle. This entangled state holds the potential for ensuring complete security in future information networks.

“The field of synthetic diamond science is moving very quickly, requiring us to develop CVD techniques that produce exceptionally pure synthetic diamond material at nano-engineering levels,” said Adrian Wilson, head of Element Six Technologies. “Additionally, by applying the invaluable knowledge gained in our research, we’re able to successfully develop and advance extreme performance solutions for our customers that capitalize on synthetic diamond’s unique combination of properties, which can subsequently be leveraged across a range of industries.” 

Element Six collaborates with a number of universities to develop cutting-edge synthetic diamond solutions, for application across multiple industries, such as semiconductors and optics. This latest breakthrough could enable new applications in quantum information science and quantum-based sensors, and future encryption-based networks for communications. DARPA (QuASAR) and European Union FP7 (DIAMANT) helped fund Element Six and Delft’s quantum network research. 

Element Six is a synthetic diamond supermaterials company. Element Six is a member of the De Beers Group of Companies, its majority shareholder. Element Six designs, develops and produces synthetic diamond supermaterials, and operates worldwide with its head office registered in Luxembourg, and primary manufacturing facilities in China, Germany, Ireland, Sweden, South Africa, U.S. and the U.K.

The 59th annual IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) has issued a Call for Papers seeking original work in microelectronics research and development. The paper submission deadline is Monday, June 24, 2013 at 23:59 p.m. Pacific Time.

Special Focus Sessions at the 2013 IEDM will include bioMEMS, analog devices and circuits, advanced semiconductor manufacturing, and terahertz devices. Overall, increased participation is sought this year in circuit and process technology interaction, energy harvesting, bio-sensors and bioMEMS, power devices, magnetics and spintronics.

The 2013 IEDM will take place at the Washington Hilton Hotel December 9-11, 2013, preceded by a full day of Short Courses on Sunday, Dec. 8 and 90-minute afternoon tutorial sessions on Saturday, Dec. 7. Also, building on the popularity of the inaugural Entrepreneurs Luncheon held at last year’s IEDM, the event will be held once again, on Wednesday, Dec. 11.

The world’s best scientists and engineers in the field of microelectronics from industry, academia and government will gather at the IEDM to enjoy a technical program of more than 220 presentations, along with panels, special sessions, Short Courses, IEEE/EDS award presentations and other events spotlighting more leading work in more areas of the field than any other conference. Papers in the following areas are encouraged:

  • Circuit and Device Interaction
  • Characterization, Reliability and Yield
  • Display and Imaging Systems
  • Memory Technology
  • Modeling and Simulation
  • Nano Device Technology
  • Process and Manufacturing Technology
  • Power and Compound Semiconductor Devices
  • Sensors, MEMS and BioMEMS

 For registration and other information, interested persons should visit the IEDM 2013 home page at www.ieee-iedm.org.

Intel Corporation announced that the board of directors has unanimously elected Brian Krzanich as its next chief executive officer (CEO), succeeding Paul Otellini. Krzanich will assume his new role at the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting on May 16. The board of directors also elected Renée James, 48, to be president of Intel. She will also assume her new role on May 16, joining Krzanich in Intel’s executive office.

Krzanich, Intel’s chief operating officer since January 2012, will become the sixth CEO in Intel’s history. As previously announced, Otellini will step down as CEO and from the board of directors on May 16.

“After a thorough and deliberate selection process, the board of directors is delighted that Krzanich will lead Intel as we define and invent the next generation of technology that will shape the future of computing,” said Andy Bryant, chairman of Intel.

“Brian is a strong leader with a passion for technology and deep understanding of the business,” Bryant added. “His track record of execution and strategic leadership, combined with his open-minded approach to problem solving has earned him the respect of employees, customers and partners worldwide. He has the right combination of knowledge, depth and experience to lead the company during this period of rapid technology and industry change.”

Krzanich, 52, has progressed through a series of technical and leadership roles since joining Intel in 1982.

As chief operating officer, Krzanich led an organization of more than 50,000 employees spanning Intel’s Technology and Manufacturing Group, Intel Custom Foundry, NAND Solutions group, Human Resources, Information Technology and Intel’s China strategy.

James, 48, has broad knowledge of the computing industry, spanning hardware, security, software and services, which she developed through leadership positions at Intel and as chairman of Intel’s software subsidiaries — Havok, McAfee and Wind River. She also currently serves on the board of directors of Vodafone Group Plc and VMware Inc. and was chief of staff for former Intel CEO Andy Grove.

Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) recently joined the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a partner in an ongoing NSF project to further develop compact models of emerging nanoelectronic devices such as might be used in next-generation consumer electronics.

The project focuses on nano-engineered electronic device simulation (NEEDS). NEEDS is a node of a larger National Nanotechnology Initiative project called the Network for Computational Nanotechnology (NCN). NCN offers researchers tools to explore nanoscale phenomena through theory, modeling and simulation, while also developing enhancements to science and engineering education.

The existing $3.5 million award from NSF, now bolstered by joint support from NSF and SRC of $2.5 million, supports a five-year program that is the largest of its kind dedicated to realizing the promise of nanoscience in innovative circuits and systems applications

By enabling the simulation of circuits and systems, compact models connect nanomaterials and devices to potential circuit applications that are simulated with SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis). NEEDS is charged with creating a complete compact model development environment (NEEDS-SPICE) that supports the creation of high-quality models and provides industrial and academic designers with robust models that run in both commercial and open source SPICE-compatible simulation platforms.

NEEDS will support this platform with a set of best practices and processes and a suite of research and educational resources. During the course of this work, NEEDS will produce an open source platform, open source compact models and open content educational resources, which will be available on nanoHUB.org.

“Moving from devices to systems is the next phase of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, and compact models are the critical link between the two,” said Lynn Preston, NCN program team leader at NSF. “Supported by NSF since its inception in 2002, the nanoHUB has become the flagship science and engineering gateway for nanotechnology. It provides the ideal platform for disseminating the work of the NEEDS Node and for engaging a global community in developing compact models for nanodevices and systems.”

“Predictive compact models are vital for circuit designers to explore their novel ideas to take full advantage of these emerging nano-enabled devices and systems, and an organized effort like the NEEDS initiative is both timely and essential,” said Kwok Ng, Senior Director of Device Sciences at SRC.

Led by Purdue University Engineering Professor Mark Lundstrom, this NSF/SRC partnership expands the NSF base support to the core NEEDS team at Purdue, MIT and the University of California, Berkeley and adds faculty from Stanford University to the team. Additionally, the NEEDS team will interact with SRC Global Research Collaboration industry representatives in the device, circuits/systems and CAD areas.

The NEEDS Node was initiated in September 2012 and the NSF/SRC partnership in support of the expanded Node officially begins work today. NEEDS anticipates delivering initial results in December.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2012, its budget was $7.0 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives about 50,000 competitive requests for funding and makes about 11,500 new funding awards. NSF also awards about $593 million in professional and service contracts yearly.

Scientists from IBM today unveiled the world’s smallest movie, made with one of the tiniest elements in the universe: atoms. Named "A Boy and His Atom," the Guinness World Records -verified movie used thousands of precisely placed atoms to create nearly 250 frames of stop-motion action.

world's smallest movie

"A Boy and His Atom" depicts a character named Atom who befriends a single atom and goes on a playful journey that includes dancing, playing catch and bouncing on a trampoline. Set to a playful musical track, the movie represents a unique way to convey science outside the research community.

Today, it takes roughly one million atoms to store a single bit of data on a computer or electronic device. A bit is the basic unit of information in computing that can have only one of two values, one or zero. Eight bits form a byte. In 2012, IBM Research announced it can now store that same bit of information in just 12 atoms with the creation of the world’s smallest magnetic memory bit. The movie starts with 12 atoms to celebrate the breakthrough by IBM scientists of successfully using 12 atoms to store one bit of data — in our current technology, it takes 1,000,000 atoms to store one bit of data. This breakthrough could transform computing by providing the world with devices that have access to unprecedented levels of data storage, potentially making our computers and devices smaller and more powerful.

But even nanophysicists need to have a little fun. In that spirit, the scientists moved atoms by using their scanning tunneling microscope to make their movie. The ability to move single atoms, one of the smallest particles of any element in the universe, is crucial to IBM’s research in the field of atomic-scale memory.

For now, the 12-atom bit memory lives in a lab. How to make such small bits commercially viable is the big question in the field of nanotechnology. This technology is probably 10 to 30 years in the future, IBM officials say.

The world’s smallest movie set

The scanning tunneling microscope (STM):
One way to look at the STM is as a needle that drags atoms across a surface using magnetism. But behind that needle is a room full of equipment, all there to control the environment to a spectacular degree. The development of the STM by IBM researchers Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986.

Copper plate:
The scientists used copper 111 as the surface of the animation — the same material they used 10 years ago when they built the first computer that performed digital computation operations.

Carbon monoxide (CO):
The scientists chose carbon monoxide atoms to move around the plate. Carbon monoxide has one carbon atom and one oxygen atom, stacked on top of each other,

Viewers may notice little ripples around the atoms as they watch the movie. Those waves are a disturbance in the electron density in the copper atoms on a copper plate. When a carbon monoxide molecule comes close to the plate, the electrons in the copper atoms are displaced. Because they can’t escape the surface of the copper, they protrude (similar to the way water ripples — but doesn’t break the surface — when you throw a rock into a lake). The scientists used copper because that element, in combination with carbon monoxide, produced the most stable atoms for moving.

Once again demonstrating Apple’s power to ordain winners in the electronics supply chain, the top suppliers last year of microelectromechanical systems microphones were those that provided devices for iPhones and iPads.

Suppliers that had significant sales to Apple occupied the Top 4 MEMS microphone ranks in 2012, according to an IHS iSuppli MEMS and Sensors Special Report from information and analytics provider IHS. These companies were No. 1 Knowles Electronics from Illinois, AAC of China in second place, Massachusetts-based Analog Devices in the third spot, and Goertek of China in fourth. Together the Top 4 players last year commanded combined revenue of $513 million, equivalent to 88 percent of total MEMS microphone industry revenue of $583 million, as shown in the table below.

top MEMS microphone suppliers

 Apple gets on the mic

“Microphones continue to be one of the best success stories in MEMS, with mobile device manufacturers adding increasing numbers of these devices to their phones to support advanced features, such as voice command and noise suppression,” said Jérémie Bouchaud, director and senior principal analyst for MEMS and sensors at IHS. “Multiple microphones now are being adopted in smartphones to cancel ambient sounds—crucial for handsets when carrying out voice command systems, such as Apple’s Siri. Apple has led the way in the adoption of MEMS microphone technology and has steadily added the number of devices used in each of its mobile products, compelling competitors to follow suit.”

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, Bouchaud noted.

Noise suppression and voice commands also are seeing increased adoption in tablets and Ultrabooks, resulting in the use of multiple microphones as ultrasonic transducers for hand-gesture commands.

Aside from handsets, MEMS microphones are used in other important applications such as headsets, gaming, cameras, televisions and hearing aids.

The top suppliers, in a nutshell

Knowles continued to dominate the MEMS microphone sphere, outflanking all other suppliers with revenue last year of $291 million—practically half of the industry total. But while it has the most comprehensive product portfolio and ships to virtually every original equipment manufacturer, Knowles has seen its MEMS microphone market share tumble by 16 percentage points from 2011 to 2012 because of erosion in its business with Apple. Knowles is still the first supplier for the iPad mini, but has slipped to second place behind AAC in providing MEMS microphones for the iPhone.

Knowles, however, has exerted efforts to remain competitive, reducing the size of its MEMS die and most likely migrating soon to larger wafer sizes from 6 to 8 inches as it engages with new foundry partners.

No. 2 and No. 4 AAC and Goertek share similar profiles, both being Chinese electret condenser microphone (ECM) suppliers that now rely almost exclusively on MEMS die technology from Germany’s Infineon Technologies. AAC is the top source for the iPhone and iPad 3 with revenue last year of $98 million, while Goertek is No. 1 for iPhone headsets with $46 million in revenue. Apple was the biggest client in both cases, supplying more than 40 percent of MEMS microphone revenue in 2012 for each company.

Third-ranked Analog Devices basked in revenue of approximately $78 million, thanks to its role as lone supplier of the third microphone for the iPhone 5 and the iPad. The company focuses on high-performance parts and sells at significantly higher prices than other suppliers, accounting for its third-place finish overall.

Infineon’s strategy

Also in a notable development, Infineon has hit upon a successful formula for operating in the market. The German manufacturer focuses only on silicon, developing and then selling MEMS microphone dies as well as application-specific integrated circuits to traditional ECM companies, which then package the chips into MEMS microphones that are sold afterward under their individual brands. Infineon’s customers include AAC and Goertek, as well as two other Top 12 MEMS microphone suppliers—sixth-ranked Hosiden of Japan; and No. 7 BSE of South Korea.

STMicroelectronics on the rise

Rounding out the Top 5 and becoming a serious challenger last year to the incumbents was French-Italian manufacturer STMicroelectronics, which sold 60 million MEMS microphone units in 2012, up from zero in 2010.

Unlike AAC and Goertek that buy their MEMS dies from Infineon, STM sources from Omron Electronics in Japan and also relies on its own application-specific integrated circuit, producing innovatively assembled MEMS microphones that enable a high signal-to-noise ratio. Nokia is STM’s top customer, but STM also supplies product to HTC, Amazon’s Kindle tablet as well as laptops from HP, Dell, Lenovo and Asus.

The other ranking suppliers in the Top 12 provided MEMS microphones for a range of other electronic devices made by companies besides Apple. Hosiden supplied to Nintendo handheld game players and Sony handsets; BSE provided for Samsung and LG smartphones; Germany’s Bosch played mostly in the laptop segment for HP and Dell; and Scotland-based Wolfson Microelectronics broke through at the end of last year by supplying to the Microsoft Surface tablet.

New kids on the MEMS block

The newcomers to watch included a clutch of Chinese companies. Among them were startups NeoMEMS and MEMSensing, as well as ECM manufacturers Gettop, XingGang and Kingstate. Other new entrants of note besides the Chinese included TDK-EPC from Germany, Solid State Systems from Taiwan, and Tokyo-based New Japan Radio.

Panasonic of Japan shipped MEMS microphones in 2007 for a limited time like fellow Japanese maker Yamaha, but then exited the market due to high costs. While the company had planned to return in 2011 with new product offerings, IHS believes that Panasonic has given up altogether on the MEMS microphone market.

IMT, the largest pure-play MEMS foundry in the US, announced today the appointment of MEMS industry pioneer and technology visionary Dr. Kurt Petersen to the IMT board of directors. Dr. Petersen is recognized as an expert and a voice of the MEMS industry having created fundamental MEMS technology from inception. He has co-founded six successful MEMS companies and acted as a consultant to more than 50 MEMS enterprises.

"MEMS are transitioning from primarily highly specialized applications to the mainstream, increasing production from millions of devices to billions of devices, a shift that is as significant as the development of wireless was to phones," said Dr. Petersen. "The industry needs strong wafer foundries to support this immense growth, and IMT has a solid track record of tackling the most challenging MEMS development projects with technical excellence and innovation, while also delivering devices in volume."

Dr. Petersen has significantly influenced the flourishing MEMS industry. With more than 30 years of expertise, Petersen co-founded Verreon, acquired by Qualcomm; SiTime, a successful MEMS producer; Cepheid, now public with a market cap over $2.5B; and NovaSensor, now owned by General Electric. Serving in a variety of roles at those companies from CTO to president and CEO, Petersen’s work has influenced the development of millions of MEMS parts that are still in production today.

"Dr. Petersen is a fantastic addition to the IMT board. We look forward to leveraging his valuable technical and strategic expertise as we grow the company into the next decade," said Craig Ensley, president and CEO. "Being located near Silicon Valley, the center of MEMS innovation, combined with our strong scientific and engineering expertise and state-of-the-art fabrication facility, IMT is perfectly positioned to lead the next phase of MEMS technology."

With a bachelor of science degree cum laude in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley and a PhD in EE from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Petersen went on to establish the micromachining research group at IBM in 1975, where he wrote the seminal review paper "Silicon as a Mechanical Material," published in the IEEE Proceedings (May 1982). This paper is still the most frequently referenced work in the field of MEMS. Since then he has published more than 100 papers and has been granted 35 patents in the field of MEMS. He has been awarded the IEEE Simon Ramo Medal for his contributions to MEMS, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and is a Fellow of the IEEE in recognition of his contributions to "the commercialization of MEMS technology."

"I look forward to my advisory role at IMT, because they have one of the most talented MEMS process development teams in the world," added Dr. Petersen. "When it comes to MEMS, IMT is the company to watch."

Additionally, visit IMT next week at the M2M Forum 2013 in Cambridge, Mass. On May 9 at 1:00pm, IMT sales manager Brian O’Loughlin and other panelists will explore the use of MEMS in medical devices and the supply chain challenges associated with "Incorporating End-User Experience into MEMS-Powered Design through Human Factors Engineering."

Innovative Micro Technology, Inc. is the largest pure-play MEMS foundry in the US. With a 30,000-square-foot class 100 clean room in Santa Barbara, Calif., IMT is easily accessible to Silicon Valley, the heart of MEMS innovation. IMT employs scientists and engineers with expertise in magnetics, micro-mirrors, microfluidics, sensors, wafer-level packaging, through silicon-VIAs and planar lightwave circuits.

For more than twelve years, IMT has been working closely to develop and mass produce breakthrough MEMS products for Fortune 500 companies and startups in the optical communications, biotechnology, infrared, RF, and navigation industries.