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March 26, 2012 — The market for micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) grew 17% to $10.2 billion in 2011, according to Yole Développement’s latest market analysis. The top 2 suppliers — Texas Instruments (TXN, TI) and STMicroelectronics (STM, ST) — neared $1 billion in sales each. The top 30 companies account for nearly 80% of total MEMS packaged device sales worldwide.

Despite its wide diversity of players and products, MEMS is a very concentrated industry. The four leading integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) — TI, ST, Hewlett Packard and Robert Bosch — together sell some $3.3 billion worth of MEMS devices, accounting for around a third of all MEMS sales worldwide.

Figure. Top 30 MEMS suppliers by 2011 sales. For companies that do not release their MEMS results, Yole estimates sales based on the number of devices sold in the companies’ product markets, the companies’ market share, and the device price based on published prices or reverse engineering studies.

The #1 MEMS supplier, Texas Instruments, is the traditional sector leader. TI’s more mature micro-mirror MEMS business saw modest, single-digit growth.

STMicroelectronics’ motion processing products made gains from the explosive rise in mobile phones. Smart phone demand drove 40% or better growth across a range of sensor suppliers. ST had a 42% jump in MEMS sales last year, taking the #2 spot with more than $900 million in revenues.

Bosch, the #4 supplier in Yole’s top-30 MEMS company ranking, grew in automotive and consumer electronics. Bosch and STMicroelectronics are now the main manufacturers of accelerometers for consumer electronics.

Knowles Electronics moved up to #5 ($362 million) on 40% growth in MEMS microphones.

Magnetometer supplier AKM jumped 46%, to $279 million and #8. Though most magnetometers are not a purely MEMS technology, they are now so closely integrated with accelerometers that Yole tracks them with the MEMS industry.

Fabless InvenSense jumped 67% to $144 million on gyroscope and motion sensing sales. TSMC manufactures the company’s products.

MEMSIC reported 80+% growth thanks to magnetometer and accelerometer sales, to enter the Top 30 ranks at $55 million.

Demand for motion, location, and acoustic sensing in handheld devices will continue to drive rapid growth for MEMS. These mobile applications will change the traditional structure of the industry, outpacing the once-dominant inkjet and micromirror components. High-volume consumer markets select for low cost, reliable high-volume production, fast time to market, and ease-of-use.

Suppliers will move from making separate components to combination sensors and modules as sensor fusion software transforms the sensor data into easy-to-use functions. "Growth is now coming from combos of accelerometers and magnetometers and from combos of accelerometers and gyros, which started to ship in volume last year," said Laurent Robin, Activity Leader, Inertial MEMS Devices & Technologies, Yole. “Companies who make only accelerometers will have to change.”

Yole Développement is a group of companies providing market research, technology analysis, strategy consulting, media in addition to finance services. Learn more at www.yole.fr.

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March 23, 2012 — The global micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) devices market will hit $11.3 billion by 2017, according to Global Industry Analysts Inc. (GIA).

In coming years, economies of scale will push costs of production lower, enabling faster replacement of current mass-market technologies with MEMS modules. High-volume manufacturing will gain in significance with the gradual commoditization of MEMS devices. MEMS manufacturing technologies like deep reactive ion etch (DRIE) and other process technologies in production and wafer-level bonding for MEMS packaging will positively benefit the market.

Increasing competition in the sector, along with technological advances and falling average selling prices (ASP), will help expand MEMS penetration into diverse applications.

Consumer and automotive electronics are primary growth drivers for MEMS devices, along with telecommunications and the medical end-use industries. MEMS are used in automotive electronics, hard disk drives (HDDs), wireless devices, medical equipment, smartphones and other portable electronics, among others.

Major MEMS players include Analog Devices Inc., Apogee Technology Inc., Bosch Sensortec, Colibrys Ltd., Coventor Inc., Epson Toyocom, Hewlett-Packard, InvenSense Inc., IntelliSense Software Corporation, Kavlico Corporation, Kistler Instrument Corp., LioniX BV, MEMSCAP S.A., Memsic Inc., Micralyne Inc., NeoPhotonics Corporation, Panasonic Corp., Sensonor Technologies, Silicon Microstructures, Inc., STMicroelectronics, TowerJazz, Texas Instruments Inc, among others.

In the medical industry, MEMS are being integrated into microfluidic devices, cancer detection, blood pressure monitoring, inhalers, microneedles, kidney dialysis, etc. MEMS-based insulin pumps and other forms of drug delivery boast enormous commercial potential in coming years. Improved medical & pharmaceutical infrastructure, and increased healthcare spending in emerging nations, will make China and India major medical MEMS spenders.

In the automotive industry, growth will stem from the use of MEMS sensors in government-mandated electronic stability systems (ESC) and tire-pressure monitoring systems (TPMS). More on automotive MEMS applications here.

Europe represents the largest market worldwide for MEMS. Asia-Pacific is forecast to emerge into the fastest growing market, with a projected CAGR of 12.2% over the analysis period. While all key end-user industries are busy recovering from the economic recession, in Europe the MEMS devices market is running into fresh set of challenges. The prolonged sovereign debt crisis, reduced consumer spending, slower economic growth, and troubles in the financial system of Europe are threatening the MEMS industry there, although GIA does not expect another cycle of downturn for the MEMS market. In Europe’s automotive industry, immediate production cutbacks are not likely. Shrewd expansion into developing countries to minimize risk exposure in domestic markets now has the automotive industry in the region better equipped to weather a possible Eurozone slowdown, and pockets of strength in places like Germany are buoying auto sales. Also, the 2007-2009 recession inspired adoption of leaner inventory holding strategies and restructured cost bases.

In the consumer electronics industry, there are emerging signs of consumers shifting to lower-priced products. The telecommunications industry in Europe has until now shown no signs of weakening.

In the industrial sector, despite the challenges ahead and uncertainties over the continued economic stability in Europe, most market indicators for the immediate-term future feature a largely positive outlook for the manufacturing industry in the year 2012.

GIA’s "Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) Devices: A Global Strategic Business Report" provides a comprehensive review of market trends, issues, drivers, company profiles, mergers, acquisitions and other strategic industry activities. The report provides market estimates and projections (in US$) for major geographic markets. End Use segments analyzed include Commercial/Industrial, Medical/BioMedical, Telecommunication, Computers, and Other Applications. The global MEM devices market is also analyzed by product categories, such as, Accelerometers, Gyroscopes, Inkjet heads, Wafer Probes & Optical MEMS, Pressure Sensors, and Others. Learn more at http://www.strategyr.com/MCP-1169.asp.

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March 22, 2012 — SensorsCon 2012 was held March 21 at the Santa Clara TechMart Center, in conjunction with the annual meeting of the International Society for Quality Electronic Design (ISQED). This is the first such meeting focusing on sensor technology, with about 60 attendees. As a design conference, the focus was more on system design and architecture rather than on the underlying technology components that I am more accustomed to covering.

MEMS for Internet of Things, mobile personal healthcare
The opening keynote talk was presented by Janusz Bryzek, VP MEMS & Sensor Development at Fairchild Semiconductor, speaking on the emergence of a trillion dollar micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) sensor market. The next generation of Nintendo Wii game controllers will reportedly each contain ~100 MEMS devices to connect gamers with the real world. The MEMS market has reached ~$10 billion, with a 14% 5-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) — expected to increase to over 50% as new market opportunities are proven. Acceleration of the MEMS R&D cycle will be aided by the development of better software design tools and by the adoption of uniform unit processes.

The much-touted Internet of Things (IoT) would require that internet data transfer capacity grow 1,000x by 2013, to support all of the proposed sensor applications. The ARM Flycatcher, a 1mm2 microcontroller with an average selling price (ASP) of $0.20, is being promoted as the world’s most energy-efficient computer and is targeted at supporting interconnectivity for the IoT.

By 2015, 30% of smart phones are expected to contain a mobile health app, and effectively all smartphones will by 2020. A breath alcohol analyzer app is already on the market for $79. Mobile personal health diagnostics is expected to be a $50B market by 2021.

Sensors in our daily lives
Kevin Shaw, CTO at Sensor Platforms, talked about the myriad ways in which we already interact with sensors every day. Apple’s voice-recognition software Siri represents a high-level integrated sensor system from the automatic activation when you lift the iPhone to your ear to the location-specific speech parsing to interpret and respond to your questions.

Also read: Apple buys most MEMS microphones in 2011

Separating intentional actions from spurious motions is a critical issue for reliable device performance. For example, smartphones contain an optical proximity sensor that works in conjunction with positional sensors to turn off the touch screen when the phone is held up to your ear; thus, “ear dialing” is not a problem. Better solutions are still required to address “butt dialing.” Digital barometers are used for vertical positioning information, with a resolution able to report stairway ascent step by step. Newer phones have three microphones to allow beam steering: the ability to focus on the speaker and cancel extraneous noise.

Crowd sourcing is the use of collective sensor information from multiple users to determine such things as traffic patterns, or the epicenter of an earthquake more quickly and more accurately than the traditional permanent sensors in the ground. The sensors are already widely available on smartphones; what remains is to implement them to their full potential.

Sensor networks
Paul Berenberg of Cubic Global Tracking Solutions spoke on the application of wireless sensor networks to logistics issues, including the thorny security issue of bulk cargo containers. Current systems allow tracking only when they pass through designated reader checkpoints. Real-time continuous container tracking requires a highly reliable secure network with extended battery life regardless of environmental conditions. Such a system uniquely requires a high tolerance for signal congestion, as when many containers are loaded on one ship. The current ceiling seems to be ~10k nodes per network, which is not adequate for large-scale logistics implementation. By the end of this century, global population is predicted to be 10 billion people, each with 100 connections to the IoT. Interested parties are invited to check out the Internet Protocol for Smart Objects (IPSO) alliance at www.ipso-alliance.org.

Terry O’Shea of Intel Labs took us to the edge of the cloud, where he defines Perceptive Edge as the use of untapped capability to interact with our immediate surroundings through sensors connected via cloud computing. Intel’s rapid prototyping platform consists of a suite of modular sensing applications based on existing FCC-approved protocols in conjunction with different physical-sense capabilities. Home energy monitoring can be accomplished with a power line sensor that fingerprints the on/off signature of each household appliance using fast Fourier transform analysis of the power spike it creates. DHS commissioned an airport monitor to sense CO, CO2, NH3 and EtOH that was unexpectedly prone to false positives due to the alcohol content of now-ubiquitous hand sanitizers. Terry’s suggestion regarding IoT is to invest in batteries, rather than routers and electronics, because someone is going to have to change a lot of batteries for all of the IoT sensors.

Qi Chen of Sprint Nextel talked about the security of sensor networks with an eye toward guaranteed delivery of critical alerts using machine-to-machine (M2M) technology. A number of individual components are in concept and feasibility testing now. One less critical application of video face-recognition technology is the ability to track how long people stop to look at a sign or advertisement, and analyze further for gender and approximate age demographics. Location-specific SMS delivery can improve the chances of successful message delivery by keeping track of the receiver’s location to know if it is turned on and is in a good signal area, or if a backup delivery method will be required.

A panel discussion included three of the previous speakers (Bryzek, Shaw, O’Shea) as well as MP Divakar, CEO of Microlytica, a company that provides algorithms for increasing the confidence level in conclusions drawn from IoT sensors. Location- and activity-based advertising is likely to be the next big driver for remote sensing applications, since the market concept brings with it its own development funding source in the advertisers. The question of ethics and privacy issues related to ubiquitous sensing revealed a deep inconsistency between nations and cultures as to what is considered acceptable and what is not. Don’t expect any kind of universal privacy standards to be developed in our lifetime.

The next big app excluding smartphone and health applications include gas monitoring (think homeland security on your cell phone), crowd sensing for weather prediction, and building the infrastructure necessary to support the IoT.

Thomas Watteyne of Dust Networks talked about standards-based reliable wireless sensor networking. Interoperation is being built around IEEE 802.15.4e. Multi-hop network reliability was of particular interest.

William Kao, professor at CalPoly, gave an overview of sensor network elements needed for wireless smart grid and smart city applications. Smart grid is focused on continuity of electrical power distribution. Smart cities hold a promise (or threat) of the integration of security, surveillance, transportation logistics, environmental, industrial, health care and entertainment. Making it easier to find an open parking space may be one of the fringe benefits of such a grand scheme. Broad-scale benefits can be proposed for agriculture as well, such as sensors for precision irrigation, fertilization, and insect infestation. The coming data tsunami became evident once again, requiring not only more bandwidth and system storage, but smarter algorithms for managing data retention and discarding data that has no lasting value.

Medical sensors
Sudhi Gautam, head of Medical Device Solutions for Mphasis, an HP company, discussed the emerging opportunities for sensors in medicine. A critical component of the definition of a medical device is that its function is not dependent on being metabolized; it is an engineering discipline, not a product of chemistry or biology to first order. The band of 400-410MHz has been set aside by the FCC specifically for medical device intercommunication. Endoscopes can today be replaced by a camera pill that can take 57,000 photos as it passes through the entire digestive system in a procedure considerably less invasive than a colonoscopy. I suspect this will eventually result in new posting limits on Snapfish.com.

Michael A. Fury, Ph.D. is director and senior technology analyst at Techcet Group, North Plains, OR.

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March 21, 2012 — Wafer processing equipment provider SPTS Technologies delivered its first vapor hydrogen fluoride (VHF) etch system in China, installing a Primaxx Monarch 3 tool at the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT) for dry release etch of micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS).
 
SPTS uses HF vapor to etch away sacrificial silicon oxide in MEMS structures, using reduced pressure tailored to release very small features on the die. It combines anhydrous HF gas and alcohol vapor at reduced pressure, creating a wide, stable process window that works with various oxide compositions and thicknesses. The composition remains highly selective to other common MEMS materials, such as aluminum, preventing attack on exposed surfaces. The Primaxx Monarch 3 uses a 3-wafer process module for higher throughput and repeatable etch processes.

SPTS’ HF vapor etch technology reportedly prevents stiction, which occurs during wet etch when the released microstructure and substrate are pulled together by the surface tension of the liquid between them during drying.

SIMIT selected the SPTS dry etch tool for its MEMS accelerometer development project because it releases fine features without stiction. The company also offers timely local support in Shanghai, said Professor Yang Heng from SIMIT

SIMIT is a multidisciplinary institute within the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) that engages in both fundamental and applied research. The Primaxx Monarch 3 system is housed at SIMIT’s facility in Shanghai, China.

SPTS Technologies (a Bridgepoint portfolio company) designs, manufactures, sells, and supports etch, PVD, CVD and thermal wafer processing solutions for MEMS, advanced packaging, light-emitting diode (LED), high-speed RF on gallium arsenide (GaAs), and power management device fab. Learn more at www.spts.com.

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March 19, 2012 — ACUTRONIC released standard, off-the-shelf 2-axis rate tables to test several micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) devices simultaneously. The 21-series is an economical version of the company’s highly customized high-end systems and is primarily made for MEMS manufacturers.

The 21-series tests small inertial measurement units (IMU) or other MEMS sensors. The testers mechanically stimulate MEMS for calibration and performance verification.

An integrated motion controller allows precise measurement and closed-loop control of position, rate, and acceleration. The controller supports a subset of the industry-standard ACUTRONIC Command Language (ACL) for communicating with a host computer.

Suiting use at the MEMS fab, the rate and position tables are designed to handle larger production volumes and integrate easily into the production line.

The 21-series comes in five standard configurations for testing devices used in commercial, medical, industrial, and ground transportation applications.

Access product data at http://www.acutronic.com/fileadmin/cms_files/AUS_DS/Datasheets-2-Axis-Rate-Tables-21-Series.pdf.

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March 19, 2012 – BUSINESS WIRE — Advantest Corporation (TSE:6857, NYSE:ATE) began producing micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) relays, shipping samples in April 2012. The MEMS relays will be used in semiconductor testing equipment, high-speed communications devices, high-frequency wave measurement equipment and their components.

Mass production will begin in January 2013.

Advantest manufactures the MEMS with its proprietary deposition technology, creating 1µm-thick piezoelectric film. This enables a smaller form factor and lower actuation voltage (12V) compared to high-frequency wave relays using electromagnetic or electrostatic actuation. The MEMS device is available in 5.4 x 4.2 x 0.9mm or 2.9 x 3.4 x 0.9mm form factors.

The MEMS are not easily affected by ambient static electricity, like electrostatic relays. The relay also has high reliability, using contact-point control technology honed in Advantest’s semiconductor testing equipment. Using Advantest’s high-frequency measurement technology, the relay can handle up to 20GHz high-frequency transmission, with 50Ω characteristic impedance.

Advantest now plans to introduce products outside the semiconductor testing area, in fields such as automotive and pharmaceutical/medical care.

Advantest provides automatic test equipment (ATE) for the semiconductor industry and measuring instruments used in the design and production of electronic instruments and systems. More information is available at www.advantest.com.

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March 19, 2012 — Researchers at Columbia Engineering and University of Pennsylvania, led by Columbia Engineering professor Ken Shepard, developed a way measure nanopores with less error, designing a custom integrated circuit (IC) using commercial semiconductor technology and building the nanopore measurement around the new amplifier chip.

The researchers put the amplifier chip directly into the liquid chamber next to the nanopore, for a cleaner signal. The team could observe single molecules passing through the pore in 1ms, said Jacob Rosenstein, a Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering at Columbia Engineering and lead author of the study. "Previously, scientists could only see molecules that stay in the pore for more than 10ms," he explained. Shepard’s group is continuing to improve these techniques, aiming for 10X improvement in the next generation, measuring things that last only 100ns.

Photo. The Columbia Engineering team’s custom multichannel CMOS preamplifier chip, wire bonded to a circuit board with gold wire. SOURCE: Columbia Engineering.

The electronic single-molecule measurement method allows observations in the range of billions of signals per second, as compared to a few thousand photons per second with fluorescent-molecule optical techniques. With optical techniques, "you can’t see anything that happens faster than a few milliseconds, because any image you could take would be too dim," explained Shepard. With electronic measurements, "there is no equivalent to a fluorescent wavelength filter, so even though the signal comes through, it is often buried in background noise."

Classical electrophysiology amplifiers are mostly optimized for slower measurements, noted Shepard, so the team designed its own IC. Rosenstein designed the new electronics and performed related lab work.

The nanopore sensor method took shape with the help of Marija Drndic, a professor of physics at the University of Pennsylvania, who gave a seminar at Columbia Engineering in 2009. Drndic’s group at the University of Pennsylvania fabricated the nanopores that the team then measured in their new system.

Instead of slowing down the DNA, the researchers built faster electronics, combining sensitive electronics with the most sensitive solid-state nanopores, Drndic said. The result is a simple, portable set up that could be used for significantly lower-cost DNA sequencing or other medical applications.

The lab is also working with other electronic single-molecule techniques based on carbon nanotube transistors.

This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), and the Office of Naval Research.

Results were published in the Advance Online Publication on Nature Methods’ website on March 18.

March 16, 2012 — The Great East Japan Earthquake, March 11, 2011 off Sendai, was "a Darwinian event" for the micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) market, says IHS. The MEMS supply chain came out of the disaster much richer, more diverse, and better positioned for growth, shows the IHS iSuppli MEMS & Sensors Service.

Also read: Japan 1 year after the earthquake: Supply chain lessons
 
The majority of MEMS operations in Japan escaped damage, but the global business impact of the earthquake was significant, said Richard Dixon, principal analyst for MEMS & sensors at IHS. In light of the threat of supply disruptions, some MEMS buyers diversified their supplier bases, reducing reliance on a small pool of sole sources in Japan, he added. The result? A more secure supply chain, and new opportunities for MEMS suppliers globally.

Japan accounted for about 33% of global MEMS sensor market revenue at the time of the earthquake last year. Despite this, only 5 MEMS-related production facilities were directly affected, located in the northeast of the country (see map): Freescale Semiconductor’s accelerometer facility in Sendai; Canon’s MEMS printhead fab in Fukushima; Texas Instruments’ DLP wafer site in Miho; Seiko Epson’s printhead, gyroscope and microphone fab in Sakata; and Micronics Japan Corp.’s MEMS wafer probe operations.

Map. Locations of major MEMS and digital compass fabs in Japan. SOURCE: IHS iSuppli March 2012.

Knowles Acoustics is one example of the supply chain strengthening that took place after Japan’s quake. Last year, Knowles shipped 41% of all microphones — MEMS and others — for cellphones. The company had a single MEMS supplier for its advanced microphones, despite several years using MEMS technology, foundry partner Sony Kyushu in Japan. No other MEMS supplier could have met Knowles’ volume needs if Sony Kyushu had been damaged in the quake (The fab, located on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu, was not damaged).

With the supply chain threat recognized, Knowles is now looking to diversify its MEMS supply base and add an additional source, according to IHS iSuppli information. With two sources, Knowles is likely to attract more cellphone original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), securing more business alongside a more reliable supply chain.

Another example of supply chain concentration was the concentration (97%) in Japan of digital compass production. The total market for electronic compasses was $400+ million in 2011, with the majority coming from 4 Japanese companies: AKM, Yamaha, Aichi Steel and ALPS. If any of the 4 companies’ fabs had been quake-affected, the digital compass supply would have severely faltered. Three of the four plants are located furthest south on the island of Kyushu, including AKM, the largest supplier with 70% market share in 2011. AKM has a general policy of mitigating risk by employing multiple suppliers.

Certain sensor suppliers for automotive applications had a more difficult time following the quake. An estimated 24% of the global automotive MEMS sensors market comes from Japanese companies. The biggest suppliers in this area are Denso and Panasonic. Denso, which makes accelerometers and pressure sensors for Honda and Toyota, showed a Q2 2011 shortfall of $850 million, although it completely recovered in the subsequent quarter.

OEMs like Toyota, Honda and Nissan did an amazing job of damage containment by finding new sources and mitigating the disruptions caused by the earthquake or associated infrastructure-related events like blackouts. Unfortunately, Japanese automotive OEMs were also hit by the Thailand floods in November 2011, impacting much of the resourcing work up to that point.

IHS iSuppli MEMS & Sensors Service can be accessed at http://www.isuppli.com/MEMS-and-Sensors/Pages/Products.aspx. IHS iSuppli’s market intelligence helps technology companies achieve market leadership.

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March 13, 2012 — The International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI) began 2 collaborative efforts related to micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) technology, specifically reliability and test, and will host a workshop, May 10 in Pittsburgh immediately following the MEMS Industry Group’s M2M Forum 2012.
 
Because test and reliability are common issues to be addressed across the MEMS manufacturing supply chain, a collaborative approach to industry-wide solutions was the best approach, said iNEMI CEO Bill Bader.
 
In 2011, the iNEMI Roadmap featured a separate chapter on MEMS for the first time, focused on the technology and business directions for MEMS technology over the next 10 years. This roadmap information, gap analysis, and industry input were combined to identify and prioritize several critical MEMS manufacturing issues:

  • MEMS Test Methods and Capabilities – iNEMI’s team will focus on providing possible refinements for testing in-process and at the process back-end.  
  • MEMS Reliability Methodologies – This initiative will investigate the development of generic reliability testing specifications/methods for integrated MEMS devices that enable specification conformance and effectively propagate key device failure mechanisms.    

The one-day MEMS Workshop will facilitate interaction and discussion on the key challenges that the industry needs to address collaboratively. The main objectives include refining the participants’ focus based on the iNEMI Roadmap and results from iNEMI’s MEMS workshop in the UK in 2011, identifying and evaluating additional collaboration opportunities around MEMS manufacturing and deployment, then forming action groups to define and execute the required collaborative programs. Attendees will also define research and development needs to support these programs.     

The International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI) comprises 100 manufacturers, suppliers, consortia and associations, and government agencies and academia, collaborating to forecast and accelerate improvements in the electronics manufacturing industry. iNEMI roadmaps the needs of the electronics industry, identifies gaps in the technology infrastructure, establishes implementation projects to eliminate these gaps (both business and technical), and stimulates standards activities to speed the introduction of new technologies. For additional information about iNEMI, go to http://www.inemi.org.

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March 12, 2012 – BUSINESS WIRE — Qualtré, silicon MEMS inertial sensor developer, appointed Mark Laich as VP of sales and business development. He will be responsible for customer and partner development as Qualtré launches its latest iteration of inertial sensing technologies.

Laich has 27 years of experience in micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) and semiconductor sales and marketing, specifically in MEMS sensors, and consumer and telecom ICs. He was previously VP of component sales and marketing at MEMSIC, MEMS-based accelerometer and magnetic sensor supplier for consumer, automotive and industrial markets. He helped grow MEMSIC rapidly during the last 3 years by leading MEMSIC’s business development with top-tier mobile handset customers. He also led the successful launch of MEMSIC’s magnetic sensor product family, driving unit volume sales to millions of units/month in 2 years and capturing significant market share within the high-volume mobile segment.

His experience also includes positions with AMD, LG, and Zilog, as well as several start-up semiconductor companies such as Lexra, Azanda, and Potentia.

Qualtré’s technologies combine performance advantages of high frequency mode-matched BAW sensor designs and cost/size scalability of the HARPSS process to deliver inertial sensors for demanding applications.

The company recently appointed a VP in engineering, Dr. Ijaz Jafri.

Qualtré is a venture-backed company commercializing the next generation of solid-state silicon MEMS motion sensor solutions. More information can be found at www.qualtre.com.

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