“This will enable us to produce costeffective
MEMS gyroscopes and other
needed functions,” he adds. Vigna additionally
foresees “some form of MEMS
sensor fusion in embedded systems, with
the sensor being combined with a microprocessor
and signal-conditioning circuitry
on the chip.”
Most MEMS IC manufacturers are
working very hard to get to the $1/chip
threshold and below by using 6-in. and
larger diameter silicon wafers in manufacturing.
Earlier this year, Freescale Semiconductor
established an 8-in. fabrication
facility in Austin, Texas, for high-volume
production of MEMS ICs.
Other captive MEMS IC manufacturers
that design and produce their own devices,
such as Analog Devices, Hewlett-Packard,
STMicroelectronics, and Texas Instruments,
have the capability to manufacture
MEMS ICs on 8-in. wafers and may well
already be doing so.
To control testing and packaging costs,
which take up to 70% to 80% of a MEMS
IC’s total outlay, many companies are
moving away from die-level packaging to
wafer-level packaging. They’re also trying
to develop techniques that take full
advantage of standard CMOS processes
for maximum cost-effectiveness.
“A large factor in rapidly reduced
MEMS IC prices is the use of design for
manufacturability (DFM) and test strategies
by device producers. Products that are
finding their way into portable electronics
have adopted very sophisticated packaging/
interconnect and testing concepts into
the design of the chip and its components,”
says Roger Grace.
“This approach of ‘integrated design,’
i.e., concurrent development of device,
interconnect, package, and the way it is
tested—as has been adopted by volume
suppliers like Analog Devices and Freescale
Semiconductor—will migrate down to
the smaller-volume applications as well as
small to medium-size suppliers of MEMS
products as time goes by,” he adds.
SVTC Technologies was formed to provide
complete access to a full-scale, process
development foundry for MEMS designers.
The company offers a full complement
of advanced CMOS equipment, development
support tools and expertise, and
commercialization services.
About four years ago, the nonprofit Infotonics
Technology Center was founded as
a world-class facility for helping MEMS
designers by taking a product idea from
concept through production, all within a
consolidated process flow. The center was
originally funded by Xerox, Kodak, and
Cornell University. Other funding comes
from the state government of New York
and the U.S. government.
Economies of scale can be obtained
using present 6-in. wafers, as long as
foundries producing those wafers can satisfy
a large market demand for MEMS
ICs. It isn’t productive for, say, a line with
8-in. wafers to be under-utilized by being
used less than 24 hours a day, unless some
other non-MEMS IC function is also produced
on those same 8-in. wafers.