I wonder how many people will buy presents that incorporate some kind of MEMS
device this season. There are a lot of choices out there. At the recent MEMS Congress
in San Diego, keynote speaker Philippe Khan of Borland fame noted that the Apple
iPhone and Nintendo Wii have brought MEMS into the mainstream. His current company, Fullpower (www.fullpower.com), seems all set to take
advantage of the rapidly growing MEMS sensor market with its
Fullpower Inference Engine.
So where else will MEMS appear this year? How about a
pedometer, like the Omron HJ-150 (Fig. 1)? At last
year’s Consumer Electronics Show, one of my
editorial colleagues amused me by showing
me a pedometer displaying the number of
steps he had taken walking the aisles of
the Las Vegas Convention Center and myriad
other venues.
My wife got one as a gift last Christmas
too—not from me, of course. I would never
make that mistake. But I think I’ll borrow it
to track my steps at this year’s CES.
The wireless game controller for Sony’s
PlayStation 3 has MEMS accelerometers inside.
I’ll have to admit, I was disappointed when I
tried to play Formula One Championship Edition
on the PS3 and it did not respond to the controller’s
movements. I wonder if future versions
of the game will account for the controller’s
motion. It seems like a more natural way to play
a car racing game.
Other gifts could include tablet PCs, ultra-mobile PCs, cell
phones, heart-rate monitors, and cars—tires too, if they have tirepressure
sensors built in. So, MEMS manufacturers should have
a great holiday season. But this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Mems In The Money
According to projections by Jeremie
Bouchaud of Wicht Technologie Consulting (WTC) in Munich,
Germany, the industry is poised for a 11% compound annual
growth rate for the next few years, growing from $7 billion in
2006 to $11.5 billion in 2011.
The top MEMS manufacturer by revenue was Texas Instruments
by a wide margin. So how about a 50-in. DLP rear-projection
HDTV for the holidays? You wouldn’t be alone.
Or how about a new inkjet printer under the tree? According
to WTC, inkjet printers had more than 30% market share in
2006, with Hewlett-Packard and Canon benefitting, placing
them second and third behind TI in MEMS revenue. Lexmark
and Seiko Epson weren’t far behind.
Microphones are a big deal, too. I spoke with Ken Gabriel,
chairman and CEO of Akustica (www.akustica.com), at the
MEMS Congress. The company makes MEMS microphones with
either analog or digital output that can be found on notebook
computers and cell phones—also nice presents. And the Akustica
microphones are very small, just 1 by 1 mm.
Maybe not this holiday season, but next year you’ll
probably find MEMS tunable digital capacitors popping
up in cell phones courtesy of WiSpry (www.wispry.com). Russ Garcia, WiSpry’s president and CEO,
says the company’s tunable capacitors will eliminate
hand-tuning in handsets.
With these devices, tuning can be done on the fly,
based on indexing tables. The
device is 3 by 3 mm now, but it
may get even smaller next year.
This innovative MEMS device
promises improved transmission
in cell phones as well as
longer battery life.
Saving Lives, Too
It
probably isn’t on any Christmas
lists this year. But another
compelling MEMS product is
an insulin pump from a Swiss
company called Debiotech
(www.debiotech.com). President
and CEO Frederic Neftel offered some astonishing figures
about diabetes, which will affect about 60 million people in the
United States in the not too distant future, suggesting a large
market for a new technology.
Earlier this year, Debiotech announced a strategic cooperation
agreement with STMicroelectronics aimed at manufacturing
and delivering to the market a miniaturized insulin-delivery
pump. Relying on microfluidic MEMS technology, the Nanopump
is a breakthrough concept that allows a tiny pump to be mounted
on a disposable skin patch to provide continuous insulin infusion
(Fig. 2). Since it takes advantage of a MEMS device, the
Nanopump is about a quarter the size of existing pumps. And, it
can provide precise control of insulin doses.
Happy holidays to you and yours!