Tag Archives: Small Times Magazine

Apr. 12, 2007 — Tronics Microsystems SA has expanded MEMS characterization, assembly, packaging, and testing capabilities at its Crolles, France headquarters. The additional space and new tools strengthen the company’s design-to-manufacturing services.

Tronics says it is unlike standard MEMS foundries focused on wafer fabrication, and offers a complete package of services, from the concept stage to full production. Tronics manages the complete supply chain for customers, and promises a deep and holistic understanding of how to effectively integrate MEMS into real-world products.

This expansion, the second in the past year, reflects Tronics’ commitment to providing start-to-finish services for producing highly differentiated, high value-add custom MEMS components. A year ago, Tronics added competencies for MEMS design, and electronic interfacing of MEMS components and upgraded its production facility to 150mm wafer technology.

The result, says the company, is improved yields and shorter time-to-market.


(Image: PolyFuel)

Apr. 12, 2007 — The United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued two broad patents for fundamental fuel cell technology to PolyFuel, Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. PolyFuel develops engineered membranes for fuel cells, and says that the patents, titled Ion Conductive Block Copolymers and Sulfonated Copolymer, cover “sophisticated chemistry and breakthroughs” behind the company’s hydrocarbon-based polymer products.

The patents are significant, the company says, because such membranes — which resemble flexible sheets of cellophane — are the critical technology behind portable fuel cells, and to a large degree dictate their size, cost, power and efficiency. Such “micro power” fuel cells are widely expected to begin supplanting batteries as the primary power source for power-hungry portable electronic devices such as laptops, PDAs, and smart phones.

PolyFuel engineers its membranes, which work by conducting protons, at the nano level.The company sells to producers of carbon and catalysts, and others who buy MEAs (membrane electrode assemblies).

PolyFuel says that it is moving into the dominant market and technology position on the strength of its membrane technology — and hopes these patent grants will secure its position in hydrocarbon membranes for portable fuel cell applications.

To date, PolyFuel has filed 23 patent applications; these are the first of several “composition of matter” applications to be granted. PolyFuel president and CEO Jim Balcom notes, “In any new field, there are ultimately a few, benchmark patents from which much future technology springs. We believe that this is one of those situations.”

Apr. 11, 2007 — Bristol, England-based Metryx, Limited, a semiconductor equipment manufacturer specializing in nanotechnology mass measurement techniques, says it has hired two new directors of business development to help the company meet a growing demand for mass metrology.

Mark Berry has been appointed North America and Europe Business Director while Gary Ditmer has joined as Asia Business Director in a move to support the company’s increasing global business development activities. In addition, Liam Cunnane, previously North American Director of Technology, has been promoted to Worldwide Technology Director.

“Both Mark and Gary represent a significant win for us. As we grow, both of their roles will be critical to the company, helping to increase our installed base and concurrently develop our service capability on a global level,” said Metryx CEO Adrian Kiermasz.

Berry comes to Metryx from Veeco where he held positions including Vice President of Sales for Veeco’s compound semiconductor division. Prior to that, he held sales and market development positions with Oxford Instruments Plasma Technology.

Ditmer joined the company in January 2007. Based in Japan, he has extensive business experience in the Far East and has held key sales positions with Oxford Instruments Plasma Technology and Applied Materials.

By Tom Cheyney, Small Times Senior Contributing Editor

Apr. 11, 2007 — Despite uncertainty about the future of the Advanced Technology Program (ATP), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) — which manages the program — will hand out approximately $60 million in this year’s competition.

On unfunded hiatus since 2004, the ATP has returned with a new version of its cost-sharing awards for high-risk industrial R&D. “ATP’s mission is to accelerate the development of innovative technologies for broad national benefit through partnerships with the private sector,” says program director Marc Stanley. “This year, the ATP is holding a general competition, while simultaneously suggesting multidisciplinary areas of high priority to addressing national priorities. All proposals (due May 21) will be ranked against ATP’s scientific and business criteria, but we are particularly encouraging applications in four technology areas.”

The four technological focus areas are advanced and complex systems, challenges in advanced materials and devices, 21st-century manufacturing, and nanotechnology.

ATP projects, typically multiyear, are awarded to single companies and joint ventures. A single company can get up to $2 million for R&D activities (which may only be used to pay direct costs) for as many as three years. A joint venture can receive funds for R&D activities for up to five years, with no funding limitation other than available monies.


ATP director Marc Stanley will convene a series of proposers’ conferences, to explain criteria, on April 13. (Photo: NIST)

A series of Proposers’ Conferences, says Stanley, “aim to assist companies and other organizations in understanding the ATP criteria so that they can write good proposals for review.” The first such meeting (which will also be Webcast) convenes at NIST’s Gaithersburg, MD, headquarters on April 13. Subsequent conferences take place in Detroit (April 16), Boston and Los Angeles (April 18), and Austin, TX (April 20).

Since the program began in 1990, 768 awards worth nearly $2.27 billion have been given out, ranging in size from $434,000 to $31 million, according to ATP statistics. Stanley cites a long list of ATP success stories, where program award funds have helped push promising technologies toward commercialization. His examples include SunPower’s A-300 solar cell; CuraGen’s micron-scale pumps, fabricated with a semiconductor-like process, that have been incorporated into the company’s GeneScape drug-delivery platform; and a novel, lithium-ion rechargeable polymer battery that is 1/35 the size of a AA battery, developed by a Quallion-led joint venture, which is used in incontinence-treatment devices (made by Advanced Bionics) undergoing clinical trials.

One of the largest awards–more than $17.5 million–went to a joint venture headed by Molecular Imprints in 2002 to develop step-and-flash (S-FIL) nanoimprint lithography technology and infrastructure. “The ATP monies are very important to the execution of the project,” says the company’s marketing director, Michael Falcon. “Molecular Imprints is a start-up, and its sole mission is to commercialize S-FIL technology. For this reason, MII would have still tried to ‘fund the project’ and do the work. However, due to limited resources, the project would have been significantly de-scoped, which means certain aspects of the program would have just not been done.”

“I would characterize the project as a solid success,” he continues. “The NIST ATP project has truly helped accelerate the development and commercialization of the S-FIL technology. [Although] there are many pure government-funded research projects, there are few programs that fund commercialization of high-risk technologies that have grown beyond the basic research stage.”

Unfortunately, the longer term status of the competition remains in doubt. Although the program received funding through the fiscal 2007 continuing budget resolution passed by Congress, there are “no funds requested for the program in the President’s fiscal year 2008 budget request,” explains Stanley.

The 2007 ATP project proposal deadline is May 21; award selections will be made no later than Sept. 30. For further information on the Proposers’ Conferences, this year’s competition, and the program in general, go to www.atp.nist.gov.

Apr. 10, 2007 — The German company Vistec Semiconductor Systems GmbH and TOOL Corporation of Tokyo, Japan, have announced the integration of Vistec’s SEM-based CD measurement system LWM9000 SEM and TOOL’s layout visualization platform, LAVIS. The integration makes it possible to display a measuring layout design data on LAVIS, and visually create a “recipe” quickly using simple mouse operations. The LWM9000 SEM can then read the recipes directly.

Performing optical proximity correction (OPC) and inspecting defects that derive from contamination or manufacturing are inadequate to improve yield rate of chip manufacturing, the partners say. Therefore, there is an increasing demand for high precision measurement technology that can measure patterns that statistically tend to have defects.

LWM9000 SEM is a SEM-based CD measurement system for 65 nm mask technology and beyond that promises stable and significant measurement precision of better than 1 nm (3 sigma) with long-term repeatable performance.

Recipes that include such information as coordinates and criteria of measurement regions must be highly accurate. Reduction in time required to create these recipes promises to improve the efficiency of the mask making process.

IMT says its vacuum levels equal or surpass those of other getter deposition services. (Image: IMT)

Apr. 10, 2007 — Innovative Micro Technology (IMT) has begun offering getter deposition services for wafer-level packaging of MEMS and other devices that require hard vacuum for device performance. Using its patent-pending getter, IMT says it has routinely achieved vacuum levels below 10 mTorr in production of inorganic devices for such applications as IR emission and sensing and for resonant oscillators in biological and chemical hazard detection applications.

IMT’s getter deposition services, offered in addition to shadow masking, are performed on 150mm or smaller wafers in IMT’s Class 100 cleanroom in Santa Barbara, California with 3-4 week turnaround for patterned wafers; faster turnaround is available.

IMT also offers a full suite of MEMS design, prototyping, and production manufacturing services to fabless and fab-light companies in its 30,000 square foot Class 100 fab, which the company says is “the largest and best-equipped independent MEMS fab in the world.”

The SQL-3.4-cryo motor targets portable cryogenic sensor applications. (Photo: New Scale)

Apr. 9, 2007 — New Scale Technologies, Inc. has created a custom cryogenic version of its SQL Series piezoelectric SQUIGGLE motor. At 3.4 x 3.4 x 10 mm, the SQL-3.4-cryo operates continuously from room temperature to cryogenic temperatures (77 Kelvins and below).

“The SQUIGGLE motor is a unique solution for cryogenic nanopositioning,” said David Henderson, co-CEO and CTO at New Scale. “Conventional electromagnetic motors do not work at all at cryogenic temperatures. Other piezoelectric motors lack the SQUIGGLE motor’s high push force and sub-micron position resolution.”

Designed for applications such as portable sensors, it is currently being used to align cooled optics at 100 Kelvins in a sensor developed for a military customer.

Cooled optics greatly improve image quality for cryogenic sensor applications such as hyperspectral imaging, says New Scale. Until now, the alignment of cooled optics has been an hours-long process requiring the operator to make alignments at room temperature, cool the sensor, test the alignment, note corrections, bring the sensor to room temperature, make adjustments, and repeat. The SQUIGGLE motor promises to eliminate this process completely by allowing precise, active alignment at any temperature.

The SQL-3.4-cryo motor provides up to 30 mm of travel; holds its position with the power off; and draws little power, thus minimizing heat load in the cryostat.

Apr. 9, 2007 —Nanogen, Inc., developer of advanced diagnostic products, has obtained a United States Government Service Administration (GSA) Schedule contract for its NanoChip 400 microarray instrument and reagents.

The contract enables Nanogen to be listed on an approved GSA Schedule and sell its NanoChip products directly to government agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), military hospitals, and Veteran’s Administration (VA) hospitals. Nanogen’s inclusion as a GSA Schedule Vendor allows government customers to obtain approved pricing and license terms from a pre-qualified vendor. Government agencies typically have separate GSA and non-GSA budgets, and therefore inclusion as a GSA vendor allows Nanogen broader access to government customers’ budgets.

The contract means that both current and new customers will be able to expedite future purchases through the GSA ordering process.

The NanoChip 400 instrument is an automated multiplexing platform that laboratories use to detect genetic sequences. Tests can be performed using reagents supplied by Nanogen, or laboratories can develop their own assays. The NanoChip instrument employs Nanogen’s core microarray technology, which utilizes patented microfluidics and electronic technology to automate sample handling and detection of results.

By Barbara Goode, Small Times staff


Some segments will be more responsive than others to migrating away from quartz, says Discera. (Image: Discera)

Apr. 9, 2007 — A new report on the timing devices market and MEMS developers’ efforts to unseat decades-old quartz technology says the upstarts face an uphill battle. But Discera, one of the startups looking to win big in this application area, indicates that uneven market acceptance is no surprise — and no problem.

The report’s author, ABI Research, has done a number of studies in this area. In 2005 (“Quartz Crystal Oscillators and Silicon Timing Devices: XTAL, XO, VCXO, TCXO, OCXO, Silicon & SAW Devices”), ABI said that until the end of the decade, silicon timing device market were destined to grow at least double the rate of the traditional oscillator markets. Another ABI report, released in late 2006, forecast the market for both silicon- and crystal-based timing devices would grow from $4.2 billion (in 2006) to more than $5.7 billion in 2011. But that report cast a dark shadow: “Silicon is increasingly able to handle some of the timing tasks traditionally given to crystals. However, continued under-investment by telecoms infrastructure vendors could have a negative effect in the medium term.”

In ABI’s new report, senior analyst Douglas McEuen says the MEMS developers are “trying to climb a Mount Everest of an industry that is already established.”

“We know that some segments of the market will be more responsive than others to migrating away from quartz,” says Venkat Bahl, VP of Marketing for Discera. “These segments offer lots of opportunity for us in the short term and enable us to build our business to support other parts of the market when they are ready to migrate down the road.”

McEuen adds, though, that the MEMS solution is based on a silicon CMOS chip, the benefits of which are huge: “the electronics industry has 30 years of established procedures, processes and understanding of the silicon solution, which creates an opportunity . . . to make up ground.”

ABI also notes that silicon solutions are less expensive than quartz, and that rugged MEMS technologies are well suited for low-jitter applications such as those in military and aerospace that require shock and vibration resistance.

While SiTime another MEMS timing device developer declined to comment, Bahl added that, “The report issued by ABI Research echos what our customers such as Vectron and their customers are saying — that benefits of a silicon based timing devices are huge. By moving from quartz to CMOS, manufacturers of consumer electronics and other devices will realize a number of benefits including reduced footprint requirements, programmability and low power.”

Apr. 9, 2007 — NEC Corp. says it has developed a corn-based bioplastic that conducts heat faster than stainless steel, and that it aims to mass-produce the material starting in April 2008 for use in mobile phones and other portable devices.

The Japanese conglomerate, whose products range from chips to defense systems, said the material could help make laptops and mobile phones thinner and lighter by eliminating the need for heat-releasing sheets or fans.

NEC aims to replace 10 percent of the plastic used in its products with bioplastic by 2010. It began using plastic made from fermented corn and kenaf fiber in its mobile phones in March last year.

“Cost is still a bottleneck, but we hope to continue lowering bioplastic costs and add value so that other makers will also follow suit,” Shuichi Tahara, general manager of NEC’s Nano Electronics Research Laboratories, told a news conference.

NEC’s new plastic is cheaper than other fiber-reinforced plastics as it requires less carbon fiber to conduct heat, but it is still more expensive than stainless steel, Tahara said.

To make its bioplastics, NEC processes polylactic acid bioplastic, mass-produced by Natureworks LLC, a Cargill Inc. unit, which it buys from Mitsui Chemicals Inc. and other suppliers.