MEMS市场展现成长良机

chenchenchen · 发表于 2009-9-28 13:45:44

MEMS市场展现成长良机
作者：Paula Doe, Contributing Editor, SEMI, San Jose -- Semiconductor International 2009-06-26 点击:926

The MEMS industry is facing the first ever pause in its expansion, as sales slipped some 2% in 2008 to $6.8B, and will likely see <1% growth in 2009, according to Yole Développement. But while the big automotive, industrial pressure sensing, and inkjet head markets slumped with the economy, newer applications continue to see tangible growth.

Demand for accelerometers and gyroscopes for consumer gear is booming, generating strong growth for players such as STMicroelectronics (Geneva) and Invensense (Sunnyvale, Calif.), and 10-30% increases for others. Medical applications continue to grow, with increasing adoption of MEMS in medical equipment and diagnostics. Just starting to hit the market this year are new inertial measurement units (IMUs), integrating multi-axis accelerometers and gyroscopes in very compact units costing <$10 for consumer applications such as gaming, camera stabilization and pointing devices.

The MEMS industry continues to do remarkably well compared with the plunging IC industry because it is so highly diversified. "The MEMS business is in really good shape due to a lot of different niche businesses," said Yole CEO Jean-Christophe Eloy. The business is fragmented among many players: only 14 companies worldwide have MEMS sales of >$150M in this $6.8B market; only 30 have sales of >$28M.

MEMS markets are expected to show strong growth over the next four years, according to a June 2009 report from Yole Développement.

The MEMS equipment market is another story, however. MEMS equipment sales reached only ~$200M in 2008, down from $330M in 2007. "At best, the market in 2009 will probably be about like 2008, though a lot of uncertainty remains," Eloy said. However, the R&D equipment business remains very healthy, and several specialty MEMS equipment makers are increasing production capacity to fulfill strong orders so far this year. Demand for wafer bonding and specialty etching is moving beyond the MEMS business to more mainstream semiconductor production for chip stacking, through-silicon vias (TSVs), image sensors and various applications of nanoimprint.

Wispry Inc. is developing tunable digital capacitors for the cell phone market.
One application about to start production with the possibility to bring even more MEMS devices into the cell phone is WiSpry's tunable digital capacitors. They are attracting considerable interest for the potential to reduce power usage and costs at both the carrier level and the handset level. The company raised $10M additional funding in April, and the product is now in qualification for production at one customer and remains on schedule to start volume manufacture later this year, according to Jeffrey Hilbert, president and COO. The rest of the top five handset makers are also in some stage of considering the technology, with one in reference design, one in prototype, and two in continuing discussions.

The company has devised a simple parallel plate digital capacitor where one of the plates is movable, made with 180 nm CMOS processes, the MEMS on top of the CMOS, on 200 mm wafers, with wafer-level encapsulation. The device is then put in a secondary package with embedded passives. These capacitors are either off or on, and made in large arrays that can be interconnected in different ways, for a variety of different high-frequency RF applications, including antennas, amplifiers and filters. First application is for tunable antennas, which correct for inefficiencies by adding or subtracting impedence to cut power usage. But the plan is to next apply the same basic structures to smaller antennas for lower frequencies.

"The software-tunable arrays can replace many different solutions," Hilbert said. "So handset makers don't have to custom-build different products for different countries." They can thus save on time to market and bill of materials, he said. The power efficiency also translates into network efficiency for carriers, enabling them to get more capacity out of their base stations. Consumers get longer battery life.

Biomedical applications also look poised for real growth. Proteus Biomedical (Redwood City, Calif.) is in clinical trials of its systems that add sensors and intelligence to cardiac stimulators and pills to treat tuberculosis and heart failure, first steps in its ambitious strategy to embed intelligence in existing medical technologies.

Key to drastically upping the sophistication of the implanted electrodes that stimulate the different chambers of the heart to keep them pumping in sync in cardio resynchronization therapy is the company's core biocompatible chip-scale packaging technology, which enables sub-millimeter scale MEMS sensor and processor packages that can last inside the body for years. Instead of having to implant more leads to stimulate the heart in different places, Proteus's technology allows 16 electrodes on two wires in one lead, which use the pacemaker's battery power source and communication system to intelligently sense movement of the chambers of the heart and stimulate their proper contraction. "This changes it from a crude device to a computer," said Proteus CEO Andrew Thompson. "And if you can build a cardiac lead like this, it's not hard to imagine what else you could do, with things like deep brain stimulation or spinal cord stimulation."

Also in clinical trials are intelligent tuberculosis and heart failure pills that can signal when the patient has properly taken the medication and inform patients of their response via their cell phone. Proteus builds a sub-millimeter-sized sensor of mineral-based food ingredients on silicon. The sensor is attached to a pill, and turns on when it becomes wet when the pill is swallowed. Powered by a biogalvanic system, the device sends transconductive, not RF, signals to a receiver in a bandage-like skin patch, an under-skin implant or their pacemaker, which can send the data to a cell phone or computer network. The TB patient no longer has to go to the clinic every day to be sure he or she takes the medication as required.

Yole will report its detailed market projections at the session Opportunities in MEMS at SEMICON West, followed by updates from fast growing Dalsa and Kionix, and startups Wispry, Proteus and Pixtronix. The session will be followed by an informal MEMS Meetup gathering.

Source Link：www.semiconductor.net/article/29 ... h_Opportunities.php

chenchenchen · 发表于 2009-9-28 13:47:28

附图

zhdreamweaver · 发表于 2010-4-9 13:10:15

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entiger · 发表于 2010-4-21 07:07:39

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I AM VERY HAPPY TO SEE THE MATERIALS.


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MEMS市场展现成长良机

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