MEMS, Microfluidics and Microsystems Executive Review

Microfabrica's 3-D MEMS

Microfabrica (previously MEMGen) is a MEMS start up that secured $15 million in venture financing last year.  We recently spoke with Adam Cohen, the EVP of Technology and CTO of the company.

Patents and IP Trends

With a high level of ongoing innovation in the MEMS industry, strategic management of intellectual property can be beneficial for companies and universities for maximizing profits and developing partnerships.  We spoke with Meagan Dietz, a consultant at McKinsey & Co., who is an expert in innovation and intellectual property knowledge development.  Among other topics, we discussed a recent study that was conducted by McKinsey and the lessons that may be applied to intellectual property management in the MEMS industry.

Cell Phones and MEMS

Cell phone based games are hot in the Far East.  Samsung, the fifth largest cell phone maker in the world, is now incorporating MEMS accelerometers to allow users enhance their gaming experience with action and sports games.  Our take is that while enhancements allowed by MEMS are not critical to the performance of the phone, they can nevertheless help the manufacturers sell more units by differentiating their products from competition.

MEMS Activity at Analog Devices

Bill Giudice is vice president and general manager of the Micromachined Products Division at Analog Devices.  We recently spoke with Bill about current MEMS related activities at ADI as well as plans for the future.

Jeff Hilbert Speaks About RF MEMS

WiSpry is a fabless, radio frequency (RF) semiconductor company headquartered in Irvine, California.  The company was formed in October 2002 through a spin-off of the RF/Wireless business unit of Coventor, Inc. and recently secured $7 Million Series A funding to drive growth of RF tunable filter and RF switch products for the cellular phone handset market. 

We spoke with Jeff Hilbert, President and CEO of Wispry and a co-founder of the company.  Jeff has over 25 years of executive management and technical experience in a number of leading semiconductor and MEMS companies including LSI Logic, Motorola, and Coventor.   

Bio MEMS and Microsystems for Stem Cell Research

There is currently much ongoing activity in stem cell and artificial tissue engineering research.  For MEMS engineers, many opportunities exist in development of devices which allow biologists to easily run experiments that were not possible even a few years ago.   

Ideas for energy saving MEMS devices

According to a recent article, "Agilent Technologies installed a $4,000 dew-point sensor in its Fort Collins plant that eliminated the need to dehumidify air during winter months, saving $20,000 a year."

Sensors 2005 -- Day 3 (continued)

HL Planartechnik from Germany, a specialty MEMS device maker reporting $15 million in annual revenues talked about their inclination sensors (about 50% of their business) which are used in automotive applications such as theft alarm.  Their other sensors include IR and magnetic field sensors for applications such as bank note verification.  Another interesting application they mentioned was a MEMS-based electronic parking brake.

VTI Technologies, based in Finland, talked about their MEMS devices.  They stressed that their accelorometers are made via bulk (vs. surface) micromachining process which results in enhanced performance (because of a larger proof mass) albeit at a higher price.  VTI reported that they shipped over 40 million MEMS devices to date.

Sensors 2005 -- Day 3

Today's program featured a full day event with conference sessions on MEMS and nanotechnology.  The sessions included presenters from Analog Devices, Freescale, VTI, Olympus and others. 

Analog Devices (ADI) gave a nice overview of inertial MEMS -- accelerometers and gyros.  These sensors have seen improvement over the last 10 years which resulted in price reduction driven by yield improvement and enhanced performance with better FEM simulation and design tools.

Sensors 2005 -- Day 2 (continued)

After attending the conference sessions, we headed to the expo hall to chat with the exhibitors.  There are quite a few MEMS related companies at the show which basically fall into four categories -- foundries, device manufacturers such as Freescale and Analog Devices, software makers such as IntelliSense and COMSOL (the maker of FEMLAB) and equipment makers such as Suss.

Tronic's Microsystems, a French MEMS foundry, told us that they recently opened an office in San Francisco.  About 50% of their business comes from Europe and it appers that they are looking to expand their presence and reach out to customers in the US.

Silex Microsystems, a Swedish MEMS foundry, was at Sensors for the first time and told us that they currently have about $6 million in annual revenues with about half of that coming from the US.  They opened an office in Boston a few weeks ago.

Dalsa Semiconductor, a MEMS foundry from Quebec, indicated that they do about $25 million per year with their MEMS business.  Their current customers include venture backed companies Akustica (microphones) and Discera (RF MEMS oscillator). 

COMSOL talked about their new MEMS module for FEMLAB.