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In its new report MEMS Front-End Manufacturing Trends, Yole Développement goes further in the equipment and materials market forecasts and in the manufacturing trends for MEMS. The report gives detailed analyses about MEMS device technology process flow, manufacturing trends and manufacturing cost breakdown.

Changes in MEMS manufacturing will drive the equipment & materials market from $378M to $512M for equipment and $136M to $248M for materials between 2012-2018

Innovative processes are fueling the MEMS equipment and materials market. Yole Développement forecasts that demand for MEMS-related equipment will grow from an estimated $378M in 2012 to greater than $510M by 2018, at a CAGR of 5.2% over the next five years. Yole Développement’s  MEMS market forecast will follow a cyclical up/downturn similar to what the mainstream IC equipment market underwent.

The demand for materials and related MEMS consumables will grow from an estimated $136M in 2012 to greater than $248M by 2018 at a CAGR of 10.5% over the next five years. 

As MEMS become commodity products, manufacturing will change and mature

Today, MEMS fabrication is still very diversified and lacking in standardization; Yole Développement’s rule, One product, one process, still applies. Indeed, MEMS has a different story than IC and doesn’t follow the same roadmap as the semiconductor industry. Thus, it’s still common to see many players with radically different manufacturing approaches for the same MEMS device, sometimes within the same company (i.e. both the CMOS MEMS and hybrid approaches can be used for inertial devices or microphones).

However, as MEMS becomes a commodity product with a quicker time-to-market compared to previous generations, anything that speeds up the commercialization process is welcome. MEMS packaging is evolving in a different direction than front-end processing, and Yole Développement has already identified that packaging standardization will become increasingly critical in order to support the massive volume growth in unit shipments, and decrease overall costs associated with MEMS and sensor content. For example, microphone packaging is very similar between one manufacturer and another. Additionally, this report shows that at the front-end level, companies are developing in-house technological platforms targeted for different MEMS devices.

In this report, Yole Développement shows that as MEMS moves from competing on process technology to competing on functions and systems, a move towards more standard solutions is necessary to drive down package size and cost.

Currently, MEMS foundries still compete at the process level and have to propose a wide range of processes in order to cope with new MEMS designs and structures. This approach differs from fabless companies, which usually focus on one type of MEMS design. Their main objective is to find the most experienced and reliable foundry partner in order to convince customers of their expertise. IDMs, meanwhile, generally rely on robust and established MEMS processes to manufacture their products. Foundries, which must always remain at the forefront of changes in the MEMS manufacturing landscape, have the biggest challenge.

TSV & unique wafer stacking solutions are key enablers for reducing die size and cost

This report highlights the major front-end manufacturing changes. For example, TSV for CSP is gradually seeping into the MEMS industry.

However, since miniaturization will be limited, new detection principles are currently being developed at various R&D Institutes (i.e. Tronic’s M&NEMS concept) in order to lower MEMS size at the silicon level. This technology is based on piezoresistive nanowires rather than pure capacitive detection, and is poised to be a leap forward in terms of device performance and chip size. This will set the stage for a new generation of combo sensors for motion sensing applications, achieving both significant surface reduction and performance improvement for multi-DOF sensors.

Amongst the large array of MEMS technologies, Yole Développement identified several that will have the widest diffusion in the years to come.

The list includes:

• Through Si Vias

• Room Temperature Bonding

• Thin Films PZT

• Temporary Bonding

• Cavity SOI

• CMOS MEMS

Other MEMS technologies, i.e. gold bonding, could be widely used to reduce die size while maintaining great hermeticity for wafer level packaging.

MEMS microphone market to doubleSilicon microphones are among a broad range of devices known as micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), an emerging field in which various sensors and mechanical devices are constructed on a single wafer using processes developed for making integrated circuits (ICs). The chief advantage of micromachining silicon microphones is cost. Several sensors can be processed on a chip simultaneously and can be integrated with passive and active electronic devices.

According to a new market research study from Innovative Research and Products, or iRAP, titled MEMS Microphones – A Global Technology, Industry and Market Analysis (ET-118), silicon micro-machined microphones (also known as silicon microphones or MEMS microphones) have begun to emerge as a competitor technology to the electret condenser microphone (ECM). The global market for MEMS microphones has reached approximately $422 million in 2012. The market is predicted to increase to $865 million in 2017, with increasingly high uptake of MEMS microphones over alternatives for a variety of applications. Thanks to Apple Inc., which has spurred on this phenomenal growth by adopting MEMS microphones for their products, namely the iPhone, iPad and iTouch, hence paving the way for other smartphone and tablet manufactures to adopt the same.

MEMS microphones are more compact than traditional microphone systems, because they capture sound and convert it to a digital signal on the same chip. MEMS microphone solutions developed on the CMOS (complimentary metal oxide semiconductors) MEMS platform frees consumer electronic device designers and manufacturers from many of the problems associated with ECMs. CMOS MEMS microphones also integrate an analog-to-digital converter on the chip, creating a microphone with a robust digital output. Since the majority of portable applications will ultimately convert the analogue output of the microphone to a digital signal for processing, the system architecture can be made completely digital, removing noise-prone analogue signals from the circuit board and simplifying the overall design.

Report Highlights

The new iRAP study has focused on MEMS microphones that can be used in mobile phones, digicams, camcorders, laptops, automotive hands-free calling and hearing aids. It provides market data about the size and growth of the MEMS microphones application segments, new developments including a detailed patent analysis, company profiles and industry trends. The report also covered the underlying economic issues driving the MEMS microphones business, as well as assessments of new advanced MEMS microphones that are being developed.

Manufacturers of MEMS microphones expect competition to persist and intensify in the future from a number of different sources. Microphones are facing competition in a new, rapidly evolving and highly competitive sector of the audio communication market. Increased competition could result in reduced prices and gross margins for microphone products and could require increased spending by research and development, sales and marketing and customer support.

Micro-machined microphone chips can match and extend the performance of existing devices, for instance, by using sensor arrays. Silicon microphones also offer advantages to the OEM in the form of improved manufacturing methods (reliability, yield, assembly cost) combined with robustness. They also offer additional functionality, such as the ability to incorporate multiple microphones into portable electronic devices for noise suppression and beam forming.

The potential for smaller footprint components and resistance to electromagnetic interference also supports new cell phone designs. Moreover, MEMS microphones meet price points set by electret microphones by leveraging established high-volume silicon manufacturing processes. This combination of size, performance and functionality, and low cost are highly desirable for OEMs and consumers alike.

Many of these new “miniature” silicon microphones for consumer and computer communication devices are approximately one-half the size and operate on just one-third the power of conventional microphones.

The range of possible applications of these microphones derives from their important advantages as compared to conventional ECM technologies. Based on silicon MEMS technology, the new microphone achieves the same acoustic and electrical properties as conventional microphones, but is more rugged and exhibits higher heat resistance. These properties offer designers of a wide range of products greater flexibility and new opportunities to integrate microphones.

Report Conclusions

Major findings of this report are:

  • The MEMS microphones market is an attractive, and still growing, 100s of million-dollar market characterized by very high production volumes of MEMS microphones that are extremely reliable and low in cost.
  • Mobile phones would consistently have the largest share through 2017, followed by laptops and tablets, camcorders, hearing aids, headphones and automotive.
  • From 2012 to 2017, hearing aids will have the highest growth rate with AAGR at 27.46%, followed by headphones at 25% AAGR.
  • Regionally, North America had about 25.3% of the market in 2012, followed by Europe at 19.7 %, Japan at 15.7% and the rest of world at 39.5%.
  • In 2012, More than ten companies and institutions worldwide are active in the field of MEMS microphones, which can be divided in two different technological concepts – single-chip and two-chip. The number of active market participants is expected to double by 2017.
  • By 2017, MEMS microphones will achieve penetrations of 92% in the mobile phone market segment and 95% in PDAs, digicams and camcorders market.
  • In terms of technology, the largest share will be for two-chip integration.

wafer revenues decreaseWorldwide silicon wafer revenues declined by 12 percent in 2012 compared to 2011, according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) in its year-end analysis of the silicon wafer industry. Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments declined 0.1 percent in 2012 when compared to 2011 area shipments.

In 2012, silicon wafer area shipments totaled 9,031 million square inches (MSI), down from the 9,043 million square inches shipped during 2011. Revenues totaled $8.7 billion down from $9.9 billion posted in 2011.

"Much like semiconductor unit shipments, semiconductor silicon shipments started out the year strong; however, shipments weakened during the second half of the year,” said Byungseop Hong, chairman of SEMI SMG and director of Global Marketing at LG Siltron. “Despite challenges in the market, 300 mm volume shipments reached record levels.”

Read more: When will the semiconductor industry recover?

Annual Silicon* Industry Trends

 

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Area Shipments (MSI)

8,661

8,137

6,707

9,370

9,043

9,031

Revenues ($B)

12.1

11.4

6.7

9.7

9.9

8.7

*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.

This report was compiled and released by the the Silicon Manufacturers Group, which acts as an independent special interest group within the SEMI association. The group’s purpose 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 with over 2,000 members, serving the nano- and microelectronics manufacturing supply chains. 

LED market discussedWith increasing awareness of global climate change and the importance of energy conservation, more and more countries have launched LED lighting projects and subsidy policies. As a result, even though the growth of the LED market in 2012 was hampered by global economic challenges, overall demand has continued to be on the rise. To help the Taiwan LED industry tackle the increasing challenges, an in-depth analysis of LED global market opportunities and technology breakthroughs were recently provided at the 2013 LED Market and Outlook seminar held by SEMI Taiwan.

Demand for high-power white LED is now growing at a rapid pace. Yellow and natural light LEDs will both exceed 200 lumen/watt in power rating by 2015 and even surpass 250 lumen/watt by 2020. OEM bulb prices are expected to drop from US$ 23 per 1,000 lumen in 2012 to $10 per 1,000 lumen in 2015 and then down to $5 per 1,000 lumen by 2020. The next few years will therefore see strong growth in the LED lighting market.

LED lighting market continues to grow from 2011 to 2016

Daphne Kuo, an analyst with ITRI Industrial Economics & Knowledge Center, added that the global market for general lighting has an annual growth rate of between 3 and 6%. The global market is expected to be worth $114.7 Billion in 2020, with the LED lighting market reaching a compound annual growth rate of 45% between 2011 and 2016, and 15% between 2016 and 2020. The LED lighting market could therefore reach a value of $79 billion.

In terms of the LED lighting market structure, LED home lighting will be the largest market in 2020 at $32.1 billion accounting for 41 percent of the total LED lighting. The next two largest markets will be outdoor and office lighting, with both approaching $11.3 billion. The overall market will itself be divided into the new installation market and the replacement market. The relative scale of the two markets is approximately 80:20. The scale of the replacement market is however expected to begin contracting after 2015 as LED penetration increases and lighting technology improves.

Different regions show different approaches to LED market

According to Kuo, currently Western nations account for 50% of the general lighting market and the Asian market accounts for 40%, so these two large regional markets remain evenly balanced. However, future growth will be driven mainly by emerging nations, and the BRICs in particular, because of strong government support for LED lighting. China will be the largest among them and account for approximately 70% of the BRIC lighting market. The China market is estimated to account for 45% of all demand in Asia, or 18% of the global lighting market.

Nevertheless, demand for LED lighting in China mainly comes from government projects. With local firms and governments joining forces to protect their vested interests, it is very difficult for outside firms to make any headway. Any company wishing to enter the China market must pay attention to the parochial nature of the lighting market. Adopting a profit sharing model and establishing a solid partnership with regional lighting channel operators is essential when entering the LED lighting market in China.

Keys to market: Lower production cost and improve efficiency

In addition to the market challenges, there will also be a number of technological challenges in the future. EPISTAR’s Carson Hsieh noted that solving problems with thermal resistance remains the number one priority. The current trend is using Flip-Chip technology to reduce chip-level thermal resistance. Another approach is to improve light emission efficiency. Light emission efficiency is in turn governed by internal quantum efficiency and light extraction efficiency. While improvements have been made in internal quantum efficiency, factors such as material absorption, uneven current distribution, and threshold loss mean that even high internal quantum efficiency within the LED produces relatively little external light. The bottleneck in LED light extraction efficiency must therefore be overcome.

The current trend is using Patterned Sapphire Substrate (PSS) technology as it has the advantage of increasing LED light extraction efficiency. Another method, called Nano Patterned Sapphire Substrate (NPSS), not only increases light extraction efficiency but also boosts epi wafer output. Increasing light extraction efficiency will not only boost overall light emission efficiency but also reduce thermal loss, allowing LED bulbs to do away with heat sinks and reduce costs even more.

By using GaN LED on Si technology to grow the epi layers on large silicon wafers, it will also be possible to adopt a production process that is compatible with semiconductor production lines and significantly reduce overall costs as well. However, GaN has a far higher thermal expansion coefficient than silicon so this may lead to technical problems such as epitaxial film rupture or wafer warping that will need to be overcome in the future.

Technology breakthroughs lead to further reductions in LED costs. This will in turn increase market acceptance and usher in of the era of high growth for the LED lighting market.

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.

 

Global NAND flash memory market revenue fell 7 percent in 2012 as disappointing Ultrabook sales negated the impact of surging demand from Apple Inc. for its iPhone line, according to an IHS iSuppli Data Flash Market Tracker Report from information and analytics provider IHS (NYSE: IHS).

NAND industry revenue fell to $19.7 billion last year, down from $21.2 billion in 2011. Revenue, however, will pick up this year and rise to $22.4 billion after last year’s stumble, and then continue to expand during the next few years, as shown in the figure attached.

“Because of its high-memory density, combined with high-volume shipments, Apple’s iPhone line in 2012 was the largest single consumer of NAND, helping to increase demand for the memory from the smartphone market,” said Michael Yang, senior principal analyst for memory & storage at IHS. “However, Ultrabook sales fell short of industry expectations, dragging down the overall NAND market for the year.”

iPhone bulks up on NAND

iPhones consumed 10.5 percent of the total NAND flash supply in 2012. In comparison, all other smartphones combined used 10.4 percent. The iPhone in 2012 had an average density of 24.5 gigabytes, a 19 percent increase in density loading compared to 2011. This represents the highest amount of embedded NAND flash among all smartphones.

Middle-of-the-road results for Ultrabooks

A major drag on the NAND industry was the disappointing sales of Ultrabooks, negatively impacting the flash memory prospects of cache solid state drives (SSD) used in the superthin computers. While Ultrabooks have had some success penetrating into the consumer computing experience, adoption overall has been underwhelming, and the incremental increase to demand has been significantly below expectations. And while SSDs achieved significant growth in 2012, the expansion was diminished by the poor results for Ultrabooks.

Windows 8 comes too late

Microsoft Corp. also didn’t help matters by deferring the launch of Windows 8 until Oct. 26, which left little time to generate interest among consumers and the corporate sector alike. As a result, PC shipments in the third quarter last year saw a substantial quarterly decline as consumers waited out the new operating system, and high inventories of older Windows 7-based PCs remained in the supply chain well into the fourth quarter.

NAND suppliers react

Such mishaps, along with overall muted demand, prompted the NAND industry to slow production midway through 2012. Suppliers took action to prevent what would have been a disastrous year for all, and a shrewd move to stabilize pricing in August ultimately led to a minor rally in October. Even so, the second half last year turned out to be weaker than expected despite solid results in the third quarter, blunting growth and resulting in the contraction of industry revenue by the end of last year.

NAND flash manufacturers will need to continue to tightly manage their supply for the first half of 2013, as the first six months of the year traditionally are the weak period for the industry. And with the market moving away from low-margin applications like flash cards and universal flash drives toward higher-value applications, the success of NAND flash players will be increasingly dependent on a smooth transition from acting solely as pure-play sellers to that of providing complete solutions, IHS iSuppli believes.

Three devices to prop up the NAND space

The fate of the NAND industry in the near and intermediate term rests on the support of three pillars of demand: smartphones, tablets and SSDs. Smartphones, for instance, historically provided important growth in NAND flash bit demand. And while growth is starting to slow when compared to the earlier boom years, the smartphone engine will not run out of steam anytime soon.

In comparison, tablets have only recently become a major driving force for NAND demand, with other tablet manufacturers and operating systems beginning to give Apple’s iPad some serious competition.

For their part, SSDs are still in their nascent stage despite making up a notable portion of NAND demand, as suppliers are still waiting for the tipping point when consumers fully embrace the new drives.

Moving forward, 2013 will mark the start of another expansion period for the industry. Robust growth is expected, balanced with technology advancements and production expansion. In particular, the second half of this year will be healthy, boosted by increased demand throughout the NAND portfolio.

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.

The touch panel market is growing rapidly due to the increasing sale of smartphones and tablet PCs. The touch panel market size in 2012 was 1.3 billion units, a 39.4% growth over 2011. The market is projected to grow 34% in 2013, growing to more than 1.8 billion units, according to a new research report from Displaybank.

Source: Displaybank, "Touch Panel Market Forecast and Cost/Issue/Industry Analysis for 2013"

Smartphone and tablet PCs, major applications that use touch panels, are expected to continue to grow at a high rate. In addition, most IT devices that use display panels have either switched to or will start using the touch panels soon. Therefore the touch panel market will show a double digit growth annually until 2016, by unit. The market size is expected to reach more than 2.75 billion units by 2016.

With the explosion in the sale of smartphones and tablet PCs during the past few years, our lives have changed dramatically. They are now common place in our lives, and have a huge influence in the IT industry in general. With the introduction of Windows 8 OS in October 2012, upsizing of touch panels has begun. The impact of this event on the immediate growth of the touch panel market and the long-term effect is so immense that it cannot be estimated at the moment.

The financial crisis that started in 2008 left much of the IT industry hobbling worldwide. But only the touch panel market is enjoying a boom. Many new players are pouring into the industry, and those on the sidelines are waiting for the opportune moment to enter. As more players enter the competitive landscape, touch panel prices are falling rapidly. In addition, to gain competitiveness and to differentiate itself in the market has led players to develop and improve structure, technique and process, and seek out new materials.

The introduction of Windows 8 is leading the increase in touch capable Notebook and AIO PCs. It is still too early for the touch interface to completely displace keyboard and mouse, but the touch functionality does add convenience to some operations. We are sure to see an increase in specialized apps that capitalize on such functions. Therefore, touch functions will complement traditional input methods. As the technology is still in early implementation stages, it is used only in select high-end Ultrabooks. But it’s only a matter of time before touch functions make its way to mid-end products.

Forecasting the future of touch panel industry is not only difficult, but also outright confusing in the current landscape due to the rapid expansion; the increase in number of devices that use touch panels; more players in the market; and rapid development of new products and new processes. Displaybank has released "Touch Panel Market Forecast and Cost/Issue/Industry Analysis for 2013" to provide industry outlook by application, product, and capacitive touch structure. The report also includes the supply chain of set makers and touch panel manufacturers; and cost analysis of major capacitive touch panels by size and type. This report will serve as a guide to bring clarity and understanding of rapidly transforming touch panel industry.

January 23, 2012 – The market for MEMS microphones has nearly quintupled in just the past three years, topping a projected 2 billion shipments in 2012, a rise attributed mainly to the rise of Apple and the iPhone, according to IHS iSuppli.

"While MEMS microphones have been around for many years, 2009 marked an important milestone when Apple started to buy MEMS microphones for the iPod Nano 5, and more importantly, for the iPhone 4," stated Jérémie Bouchaud, director and senior principal analyst for MEMS & sensors at IHS. "With Apple playing a huge role, the MEMS microphone market turned up the volume dramatically." Apple’s share of MEMS microphone consumption was just 6.2% of shipments in 2009, and nearly a third of the market (31%) in 2012.

Silicon microphones are "one of the great success stories in the MEMS field," according to the firm. A smartphone may need one of most MEMS-enabled features, e.g. an accelerometer or compass or gyroscope, it typically has two MEMS microphones these days — and some handset suppliers are considering designing in a third device for noise suppression and better audio recording for videos.

Interestingly, MEMS microphones’ usefulness has resisted the typical price reduction seen in technologies rapidly adopted in consumer and mobile markets, because the high-end segment (Apple, Nokia, etc.) is driven more by than just price. "Apple, for instance, pays anywhere from three to four times more than its competitors to secure performance-oriented MEMS microphones, helping to stabilize pricing for MEMS microphones as a whole," iSuppli notes.

Differentiating a smartphone/handset with better audio capabilities is increasingly important as consumers rely on their devices for even more tasks beyond simply making a phone call, such as consuming music or video content. The new Nokia Lumia is one such smartphone specifically marketing its audio and recording features. Apple’s addition of Siri voice command to the iPhone 4S has carried over into the iPhone 5 and other Apple devices including the newest iPod touch music player and iPad tablet. "Siri demonstrated the impressive functionality that could be achieved by multiple MEMS microphones featuring a lower signal-to-noise ratio," the firm notes.

More MEMS microphones in handsets has also improved audio for video recording, iSuppli points out. The iPhone 4 and 4S had two microphones (supplied by Knowles and AAC) on the side of the display — great placement for calls and voice commands, but not for recording the sound of the video taken with the main camera on the back of the phone. The iPhone 5 has those same two microphones but adds a third from Analog Devices on the back of the phone for video recording.

Worldwide MEMS microphone historical shipments, in millions of units. (Source: IHS iSuppli)