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The 10th Annual MEMS Technology Symposium sponsored by MEPTEC (MicroElectronics Packaging and Test Engineering Council) was held May 23 at the San Jose Holiday Inn. This year’s theme was “Sensors: A Foundation for Accelerated MEMS Market Growth to $1 Trillion.” Registered attendance was ~230.

The conference opened with a keynote address by Prof. Kristofer Pister, UC Berkeley speaking on sensory swarms. Inexpensive, wireless sensor networks have moved out of the lab and are being implemented in myriad applications. A refinery in Richmond, CA has methane gas sensors at every valve to monitor emissions. Parking spaces in San Francisco and Hollywood are tagged with car sensors to provide dynamic signage directing drivers to open spaces; this system also communicates with a smart phone app (“Parker”) to take you to specific open spaces. Rail cars have temperature and vibration sensors on every truck for predictive and preventive maintenance. Wireless sensors in the field are projected to top 1.1 billion units by 2015, up from 168 million units in 2010.

Janusz Bryzek, VP Fairchild Semiconductor, revisited his theme of accelerating the MEMS market to $1 Trillion and 1 trillion units. A $1 wireless sensor unit will require a 20¢ internet access module. The HP notion of a central nervous system for the earth will call for an average of ~1,000 sensors for every person. Smart phones have spurred the initial growth burst for MEMS, but the internet of things represents the “largest growth opportunity in the history of business.” Factors slowing MEMS market development include relatively slow MEMS process R&D cycles, and a lack of industry standards for manufacturing, packaging and testing. The fusion of computing, communication and sensing has been characterized as the third industrial revolution by Vijay Ullal of Maxim. While manufacturing jobs continue to be outsourced, the profitability and job creation potential at the innovation, design and marketing end remains a lucrative economic driver for the US.

Robert Haak of MANCEF described the implementation of the $1T MEMS roadmap. The key technologies needed for success include RF, chemical measurements, energy sourcing, inertial measurements, pressure measurements, acoustic sensors and displays. The industry roadmap infrastructure needs to evolve to a 3rd generation that focuses on products that are conceived at the interface of more than one technology. Specific roadmaps proposed are sensors, data transfer and data processing equipment. These are proposed to have a 15 year outlook with a 5 year review cycle.

Richard Friedrich of HP Labs spoke of the aforementioned central nervous system for the earth, CeNSE: awareness through a trillion MEMS sensors. The subtitle of his talk proclaimed this as the decade of sensing and sense-making. True more for technology than for politics. The infrastructure behind this enterprise will require about 1,000x more bandwidth than today’s internet has available. His vision projects ~150 sensors for every person on the planet, fewer than the second speaker but with a focus specifically on CeNSE applications. A MEMS nanofinger substrate for surface enhanced Raman scattering  (SERS) provides a signal enhancement factor of 1011, enabling a detection sensitivity of 0.02 parts per trillion. The use of people as sensors is manifest in real time analysis of Tweets for regional tuning of marketing campaigns. The HP Social Computing Lab claims 97% accuracy in predicting movie revenues based on the response to pre-release advertising. Work is underway to simulate the human brain visual cortex using a system with 64,512 cores that has demonstrated the ability to learn without being taught. The root objective of a CeNSE network is to convert the flood of data into insight that leads to action. Skynet?

Greg Galvin, CEO of Kionix, presented another perspective of sensing the future on the road to a $1T market. They focus solely on inertial sensors, which had a 2004-2011 unit CAGR of ~100%. Unit prices of accelerometers, compasses and pressure sensors are already well below $1, with gyroscopes to follow by 2015. MEMS components have been averaging 2% of the end cost of products that use them. His conclusion was that a $1T market for MEMS over the next 10 years is unlikely, even though a 1T unit market is probably, and a $1T market for MEMS-enabled devices is a given.

Jérémie Bouchaud of IHS iSuppli couched his perspective as a “MEMS revolution: from billions to trillions?” The 5 year MEMS CAGR is presently running at 9.7% for revenue overall and 20.7% for shipments. Smart phones by themselves have a 17.8% revenue CAGR, and are a significant market driver. MEMS microphones are another beneficiary of smart phones, which now include multiple microphones for both speaking and for background noise suppression. Despite the myriad growth opportunities, he believes the prospect of a $1T MEMS market will require price points ≤5¢ per unit, and an expansion of the market definition to include sensors for temperature, light, humidity, UV and others.

The afternoon keynote was delivered by Steve Nasiri, founder of InvenSense, a big player in the motion interface MEMS market. Just 3 applications, mobile handsets, media tablets and gaming represent a $2.4B market by 2015. The gyro market was slow to get started until Apple put one in the iPhone in 2010. Within a year, over 70 other models were on the market with gyros, even though some didn’t seem to know what to do with them. The wearable sensor market for remote patient monitoring, home monitoring, sports & fitness will push to $150M by 2015. Does your mother live too far away to tell you not to slouch? A shirt with an embedded posture sensor can handle that for her. InvenSense has just announced an open platform infrastructure to facilitate rapid MEMS applications development.

Jean-Christophe Eloy of Yole Développement provided a status of the MEMS industry with a focus on new drivers and the path to new opportunities. The overall MEMS market is ~$10B now, growing to ~$21B by 2017. While the MEMS markets continue to grow, they are still only ~10% of the value of the end markets they enable. Accelerometer / gyroscope systems with 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) have largely been displaced by newer systems with 9 or 10 DOF. All of the growth notwithstanding, he remains skeptical of a $1T MEMS device market.

Stephen Breit of Coventor took us to the software design side of the business with his comments on realizing the full potential of MEMS design automation. If invention is the first wave, and manufacturing differentiation is the second wave, then the third wave is going to be innovation in design and integration. This is the catalyst that will be needed and has the potential to drive the hyper growth if the industry is to hit the $1T mark. Simulation of the integrated MEMS system will make it possible to compress the development cycle from the 2009 benchmark of 4-5 years. This vision includes process design kits and MEMS design kits (modules) similar to the design efficiencies achieved in ASICs. Coventor has a partnership with IMEC that was facilitated by IMEC’s integrated SiGe CMOS + MEMS integration scheme.

Russell Shumway of Amkor took us to the end of the production line with a discussion of high volume assembly and test solutions to support a rapidly growing MEMS market. He anticipates that there will be a greater tendency toward package standardization over the next 10-20 years, but the variety of packaging options is so large that the diversity will still be formidable.

Tristan Joo, Co-Chair of Mobile SIG of the Wireless Communications Alliance reviewed a few case studies of fusing sensors into mobile operating systems. Current smart phones already contain 12-18 sensors, including inertial, optical, touch, audio, magnetic, geo-positional and environmental. The future has a context-aware sensory data cloud in store for us. Smart phone apps that take full advantage of these sensors amount to less than a 0.5% share of apps downloads across all iPhone, Android and Windows OS platforms. I myself can use my smart phone as a bubble level, an audio dB sound meter, a thermometer, a compass, a ruler, a document scanner and a mechanical energy harvester to recharge my battery. But I’m a geek.

The remaining scheduled time comprised six brief presentations by companies showcasing new applications under the banner of “MEMS for the Rest of Us.”

Hillcrest Labs provides motion control systems for consumer electronics and other markets. Their flagship platform is the Freespace® MotionEngine™ that includes a gesture recognition engine and a variety of mobile, gaming and TV applications.

Movea develops data fusion software for processing sensor data into usable information. It is a spin-off of CEA-Leti in France. Fundamental elements of human motion have been compiled into a periodic table, cleverly presented as the Chemistry of Motion.

Sensor Platforms provides data fusion software in their FreeMotion™ library with the objective of being hardware agnostic. He favors mobile devices that respond to human action and context, not in the sense of obeying gestures and commands, but more in the sense of recognizing what’s going on and acting accordingly. For example, when your smart phone calendar says you’re in a meeting, a really smart phone will silence most calls and allow vibration only for a select short list of callers. The end result is to use the available data and context to anticipate intent.

Syride makes a rugged sports-oriented GPS device for tracking speed, elevation and location for hobbies such as surfing, sailing, skiing, skydiving and hang gliding. I use “Map My Walk,” which I will henceforth think of as the couch potato analog of Syride.

VectorNav Technologies is a hardware and software company that takes consumer level motion systems and upgrades them to industrial strength using established aerospace technology. Applications include human exoskeletons for the handicapped, and human motion capture for movies and medical applications. I’m pretty sure I misunderstood when I heard something about a home Cruise missile.

Xsens specializes in sensor fusion software for smart phones, tablets and sports applications. On-body MEMS sensors enable a new paradigm for body motion capture, embodied in a 17 sensor system integrated in a Lycra body suit. The system has already been used in developing video games.

May 18, 2012 — InvenSense Inc. (NYSE:INVN) says STMicroelectronics (ST, NYSE:STM) filed a complaint in the Northern District of California, alleging that InvenSense infringes 9 of ST’s patents. InvenSense contests these claims.

Both companies make micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) components. 

In its defense, InvenSense points to its intellectual property (IP) portfolio and says it “respects the intellectual property rights of others.” InvenSense’s own IP portfolio positions it well in its markets and serves as a deterrent to those that may try to copy its technology, InvenSense said in a legal update. InvenSense is a fabless chipmaker with its MEMS devices fabbed at TSMC and GLOBALFOUNDRIES.

InvenSense debuted a 9-axis motion-sensing module comprising a 3-axis gyroscope and 3-axis accelerometer on the same die packaged with a 3-axis compass in 2012.

ST is the #4 MEMS provider globally, according to IHS iSuppli with 651.6 million in 2011 revenue (an 82% jump over 2010). Yole ranked ST as #2 with $900+ million and InvenSense as #18 with $144 million in 2011 MEMS revenues.

In the future, InvenSense Inc., which recently became a public company in an initial public offering (IPO), will comment publicly on litigation matters only on a selective basis, taking into account the adequacy of SEC and NYSE disclosure requirements to serve the needs of its stockholders. The Company assumes no obligation to update the information it publicly provides.

InvenSense Inc. (NYSE: INVN) supplies MotionTracking solutions for consumer electronic devices based on a patented Nasiri-Fabrication platform and patent-pending MotionFusion technology. More information can be found at www.invensense.com.

ST is a global leader in the semiconductor market serving customers across the spectrum of sense and power technologies and multimedia convergence applications. Learn more at www.st.com.

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May 17, 2012 — Barclays Capital’s Asia IT analyst Jones Ku shares details of China’s State Council’s RMB26.5 billion (about US$4.2 billion) subsidy program for household electrical appliances. The program sets aside RMB2.2 billion to promote consumption of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and “other energy-saving light bulbs.”

The program will be in effect for one year. In addition to LED lighting, it covers energy-efficient vehicles, air conditioners, flat-panel display (FPD) television sets, refrigerators, and more.

There is currently no announcement on when the program will start, though Barclays expects it to be implemented in late June or early July. Ku says it is likely to be similar to the subsidies for energy-saving products that were trialed in Beijing from September 2011-February 2012 (10% of the selling price, with a cap of RMB400), but with the focus expanded to include more cities.

The LED lighting product subsidy has been rumored since November 2011, when China laid out its plans to phase out incandescent bulbs within 5 years. Expectations on the subsidy amount lowered over time (some early estimates were as high as RMB8 billion). The $348M LED subsidy sum discussed may be less than anticipated, though with no details on the per-product subsidies or the format of the cash deployment, estimating the likely impact to China LED demand is difficult. Certain municipal governments may match the subsidies of the central government, lowering the product cost further, Barclays noted in an earlier subsidy assessment.

Barclays looks at a scenario wherein the government subsidizes ~50% of LED bulb cost (similar to the programs deployed on the CFL bulb side several years ago). Assuming an average pre-subsidy price per LED bulb of ~$10, and assuming China accounts for ~20% of the worldwide bulb market, this subsidy would translate to ~69M bulbs or ~4% of China’s bulb demand.

For more information, see Barclays Capital’s report, "U.S. Display & Lighting: Lightfair Highlights Positive End Demand Trends, But Continued ASP Pressure" https://?live.barcap.com/go/publications/content?contentPubID=FC1821997)

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May 14, 2012 — At the 15th Symposium on Polymers for Microelectronics (May 8-10 in Wilmington, DE), TSMC and Yole Developpement gave plenary presentations on the use of polymeric materials in wafer-level packaging (WLP) from foundry and overall industry perspectives.

The most controversial comment came from TSMC’s Doug Yu, senior director of front-end and back-end technology development, who challenged the current nomenclature and pronounced that the versatile interposer technology should be called

May 14, 2012 — Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are typically manufactured on sapphire (Al2O3) substrates, about 90% of the blue LEDs currently in production. Silicon carbide (SiC) substrates are used for virtually all the remaining 10% of blue LEDs.

Sapphire substrates will see 20-30% demand increase annually for LED fab. The supply of sapphire ingots will increase more than 20% annually, shows Displaybank. Sapphire substrates require a supply chain of sapphire ingot, or boule, growth equipment suppliers, single-crystal manufacturers, and substrate makers that cut sapphire ingots into wafers. One mega trend for the industry, in addition to capacity increases, is larger wafer diameters.

A constraint, says Displaybank, is the lumen efficiency of LEDs made on sapphire substrates. LED efficiency is defined as the multiplication of internal quantum efficiency and external light extraction efficiency. Typical LEDs glow at 60-120lm/W, which should improve to the 120-160lm/W range by 2015. Blue LEDs based on sapphire substrates are limited in efficiency, due to a lattice mismatch between the sapphire substrate and gallium nitride (GaN) LED materials — 16% or more. The smaller the lattice mismatch, the higher internal quantum efficiency can be.

Table. LED-use ingot material properties. SOURCE: LED-use Next-generation Ingot/Substrate Technology and Industry Analysis Report, Nov.2011, Displaybank.

Material Lattice mismatch (%) Growth method Strength Weakness
Sapphire 16 Cz method, Ky, Slow cooling Low price, chemical stability Large lattice mismatch
GaN 0 HVPE, Ammonothermal Homogeneous substrates Difficulty in high-quality crystal growth, high price. Currently in basic research stage.
SiC 3.5 Modified Lely Chemical properties similar to GaN Price, difficulty in large substrate growth, patent (Cree)
ZnO 2.2 Hydrothermal Small lattice mismatch, large substrate possible Long research period, expensive equipment
Si 18 Czochralski Low price, large substrate possible Difficulty in high-brightness manufacturing
         
         

Since sapphire is electrically an insulator, vertical-architecture LED chips are made by removing the sapphire from the chips once the epi process is finished. GaN and SiC substrates can be made conductive, thanks to precise injections of active ions. SiC, GaN, zinc oxide (ZnO) and silicon (Si) substrates are considered as the future LED substrates, thanks to low lattice mismatches.

Cree is currently producing epi-wafers using a SiC substrate. Gallium nitride wafers are expensive, currently used for laser diode manufacturing but not for LED manufacturing. ZnO substrates are less expensive compared to GaN ones, but suffer from volatility issues at high temperatures. LED manufacturing process temperatures must be kept low with ZnO wafers. Si substrates are relatively cheap, and benefit from the long process history of semiconductor manufacturing on Si. However, Si wafers currently offer lower brightness than sapphire-based LEDs. Several companies are developing Si technologies for LEDs.

Displaybank’s report, “Next-generation LED-use Ingot/Substrate Technology and Industry Analysis (Al2O3, GaN, SiC, ZnO)” covers growth methods for sapphire, SiC, GaN, ZnO single crystals and the substrate processing methods. It also covers commercialization efforts on new substrates, and improved sapphire-based LEDs. Learn more at http://www.displaybank.com/_eng/research/report_view.html?id=828&cate=2

May 14, 2012 — Barclays Capital analysts attended Lightfair International, a large, US-based general lighting tradeshow, and gleaned several trends in light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and organic LEDs (OLEDs) for lighting. Data presented at the show points to strong and steady LED lighting demand growth in 2012, though the LED lighting “inflection year” is still in the future.

While utilization rates are still relatively low in LED fabs, many chipmakers are reluctant to convert all of their backlighting-specific (BLU LEDs for display applications) LED tools to lighting-specific production, because they value yields honed for a specific design. Chipmakers told Barclays that they do not want to reconfigure metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) tools unless they are confident that this backlighting-specific production will no longer be needed. This suggests that anticipated LED lighting demand in H2 2012 and beyond will require more MOCVD tool orders, even without higher capacity utilization rates in LED fabs. Gradually improved MOCVD capex, in Q3 2012 and beyond, will be supported by a steady stabilization in LED supply/demand as 2013 approaches.

Barclays observed that LED chips still compete based on price, even among the Tier 1 LED makers, and further cost reductions are needed if margins are to survive. LED component price declines did moderate to an extent relative to last year’s price cuts, but the aggressive pricing trend continues, driven in part by end customers leveraging Tier 3 quality price points in China against Tier 1 and 2 LED makers. Until LED makers reach 80%+ effective yields in the fabs, the distribution of LEDs per run is fairly wide. Chips that do not meet their application’s specs are dumped on the market at a much lower price. Indeed, even in lighting-grade LEDs, there is “no rationality for price points,” according to 1 Tier-1 supplier. The good news for LED revenues is that unit volume growth is offsetting the price cuts.

The quality barrier between Tier 1 and Tier 2/3 LED suppliers continues to hold, with only ~10 LED makers that can reach 100lm/W efficacy levels in mass production, and meet Energy Star, UL, etc., specifications. In step with the luminous efficacy improvements at the chip level, system-level efficacy also continues to increase, with various troffers and luminaries already approaching 100lm/W. Korean LED makers are considering leveraging BLU LEDs for some lighting applications, like linear lighting and troffers, because specifications are similar. As a result, Samsung is becoming a major threat to Tier-1 LED suppliers, longer term, as it focuses on quality.

Also read: As LED patents run out, supply chain value will shift downstream

With LED lifetimes approaching 50K hours, LEDs are no longer the predictors of the lifetime of the full system, and the lifetime of the other components is becoming more prominent. Despite various certifications available, data on the lifetime and reliability at the total system level is still fairly limited.

While still in the early stages of development, OLED lighting was also being exhibited by several suppliers, with Philips and OSRAM appearing to be at the lead from an efficacy and product quality standpoint. Philips’ OLED lighting panels reached 25lm/W this year, with the company aiming for 60lm/W next year, driven by new developments in OLED materials (Philips using RGB stack with combination of phosphorescent and fluorescent materials); new developments in the glass substrate (adding reflective element to the glass composition); and advances in the deposition and processing technology. However, while reaching 60lm/W efficacy would be a big breakthrough, the key from there would be lumen maintenance, which is still very low for the OLED lighting panels currently available on the market. And while some companies suggested that OLED lighting is now moving from a designer/architectural application to a high-end lighting application, based on the product specs and the pricing, Barclays puts OLED lighting ~5-7 years behind LED lighting.

This year’s Lightfair was “almost entirely focused on LEDs,” said Barclays analysts. While LED dominance in new products at the booths is not yet indicative of end market penetration, it highlights the inevitability of LED lighting adoption in the coming years. Most lighting manufacturers and suppliers and LED makers alike see 2012 as a year of steady, strong LED lighting demand growth, though not yet an inflection. The biggest ramp in demand remains in segments where lighting is on for longer than 8 hours per day (streetlights, gas station canopies, retail, hospitality, warehouses). This is aided by the Federal Recovery Act spending on retrofitting public fixtures. Membership in the Solid State Street Lighting Consortium — a Department of Energy (DOE)-sponsored consortium of cities and municipalities looking to upgrade their lighting systems to energy-efficient solutions — has expanded to ~350 members from less than 100 last year. Payback periods for LED installs are compressing — for outdoor lights, LED systems have gone from 50-60% more expensive than non-LED lights last year to ~30-50% more. The payback for replacing non-LED luminaires in many applications is currently 2-5 years, sufficient to ensure funding for many commercial and industrial users. Utility rebates and government subsidies offered in various regions enhance paybacks further.

Many companies at Lightfair indicated that advances in LED chips and components, especially with regard to high efficacy, have lowered the cost of other components in a lighting system, driving down costs.

Learn more about Lightfair at http://www.lightfair.com.

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May 14, 2012 – BUSINESS WIRE — TechNavio predicts 22% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) microphones from 2011 to 2015, mainly due to the shrinking form factor of these devices. The global MEMS microphone market is also reaching emerging applications in the healthcare segment, outside of its core application area in consumer electronics.

MEMS microphones are smaller in size with more functionality than traditional electret condenser microphones (ECMs). MEMS microphone vendors are focusing on reducing the size even more with improved manufacturing and packaging technologies. Key vendors dominating this market space include AAC Technologies Holdings Inc., Akustica Inc., Analog devices Inc., and Knowles electronics Inc.

In addition to size, MEMS microphones offer robustness and low power consumption, enabling high-quality output at a more efficient operation.

MEMS microphones still carry a high cost, prohibiting growth in cost-sensitive areas, or applications where the increase in microphone performance is not enough of a differentiator to justify the higher bill of materials (BOM) cost.

Also read: Digital MEMS microphones to overtake analog

MEMS microphones are being designed into healthcare applications from blood flow monitors to heartbeat and lung function monitors, thanks to improvements in MEMS microphones, TechNavio reports.

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Global MEMS Microphone Market 2011-2015" report from TechNavio to their offering. Access the report here: http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/5l9lzt/global_mems_microp

Visit the MEMS Channel of Solid State Technology, and subscribe to our MEMS Direct e-newsletter!

May 14, 2012 — Heraeus introduced its high-reliability composite aluminum/copper (CucorAl) semiconductor bonding wire, which offers strong mechanical and electrical bonds to semiconductor pads, with good thermal properties.

During passive temperature cycling and active power cycling tests, the Al-clad Cu bonding wire showed improved long-term reliability over Al bonding wires.

The aluminum coating is soft, structured around the copper core in a way that enables a reliable bonding window with existing chip metallizations and conventional wirebond tools. The thick wire is 60-70% copper by volume. It is available in 200-500