According to market research and strategy consulting firm Yole Développement (Yole), the total market size of MEMS, sensors and actuators will double from $48 billion in 2018 to $93 billion in 2024.[i] The consumer market will continue to drive volume, with applications such as smartphones making up for in volume what they lack in average selling price (ASP). Stronger demand in automotive, biomedical/health, industrial, and voice-first applications (such as smart speakers) will support this upward trajectory. With so much growth ahead of us, how will the design and manufacture of MEMS keep pace with industry demand for higher levels of innovation and integration, lower cost and lower power, smaller footprints, and faster design cycles — all while meeting acceptable price points?
We turned to a handful of MEMS manufacturing experts from SEMI-MSIG who will join us at SEMICON West 2019, July 9-11 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, to explore the complexities of keeping pace with market demand for MEMS over the next decade.
Address the Design Gap
Mentor GM, ICDS Division Greg Lebsack and SoftMEMS President Mary Ann Maher see tremendous progress in the manufacturing supply chain for MEMS. At the same time, they acknowledge the significant gap that still exists in design capability for creating the billions of interconnected sensors required for future applications. Greg and Mary Ann will dive into the standards, ecosystem requirements and collaborative design solutions that will allow the micro-sensors industry to meet demand for next-generation wearables, Internet of Things (IoT) products and medical devices.
Get Collaborative with Greg and Mary Ann: Addressing the Design Gap to Enable Next Generation Sensor-Based Products, SEMICON West, TechTALKS South, Thursday, July 11, 2019, 10:35-11:00 a.m. Register today.
Get to a Really Big Number
From thousands of sensors and actuators in a single airplane to hundreds in a single car or a piece of factory equipment to the twenty-plus that ship in each of the hundreds of millions of the world’s smartphones, we aren’t even close to reaching the saturation point for these intelligent devices. SPTS Technologies EVP & GM David Butler isn’t living on the Spaceship Enterprise (or the Millenium Falcon, come to think of it) when he says that we are going to get to a trillion sensors. It is going to happen. The questions are: how and when?
Connect with David: Enabling the Age of a Trillion Sensors, SEMICON West, TechTALKS South, Thursday, July 11, 2019, 11:00-11:25 a.m. Register today.
Shift to Automotive-Grade
Demand for optical sensing technologies such as LIDAR is shifting sensor manufacturing requirements from consumer- to automotive-grade, with its enhanced lifetimes, temperature cycling and higher performance specifications. To meet demand, manufacturers are turning to wafer-level processing, since it complies with the hermetic sealing and dew-point control required for the more rigorous automotive-grade applications. EV Group Business Development Director Thomas Uhrmann, Ph.D., will provide an overview of the steps for manufacturing optical elements, including integration with CMOS circuitry, as he offers a window into the future of automotive packaging for sensors.
Tune in with Thomas: Future Manufacturing Requirements for Automotive and Photonics Sensing, SEMICON West, TechTALKS South, Thursday, July 11, 2019, 11:25-11:50 a.m. Register today.
Measure Twice, Cut Once
Faster time-to-market, improved device yield, and greater productivity in high-volume manufacturing are increasingly critical requirements for MEMS manufacturers. When a single manufacturing error can cost hundreds of thousands if not a million or more dollars — as well as months of development time — designers can save both time and cost by employing an integrated approach to MEMS design. Lam Research Sr. Director of Strategic Marketing David Haynes will explain how simulation, verification and process modeling can address MEMS-specific engineering challenges such as multi-physics interactions, process variations, MEMS + IC integration, and MEMS + package interaction. Using the right tools before committing to actual fabrication can make or break a project.
Get Conceptual (and Practical) with David: Enabling Better MEMS from Concept to High-Volume Production, SEMICON West, TechTALKS South, Thursday, July 11, 2019, 11:50 a.m.-12:15 p.m. Register today.
Navigate a Dynamic Foundry Landscape
We’re still living in a one product-one process world when it comes to MEMS manufacturing. This makes bringing a new device to market both time-consuming and expensive. These challenges aside, the functional capabilities of MEMS, combined with small-footprint and low-power options, have made MEMS increasingly popular. How are market dynamics in MEMS manufacturing evolving to accommodate both demand for high-volume, lower-cost products such as MEMS microphones as well as high-value, lower-volume products such as biomedical devices, IoT products and industrial sensors? Rogue Valley Microdevices Founder & CEO Jessica Gomez will explain how foundry consolidation through acquisition, collaboration with other ecosystem players, and specialization in vertical markets such as biomedical or optical are some of the approaches that are transforming the MEMS foundry landscape.
Join the Evolution with Jessica: Consolidation, Collaboration, Specialization: How Will MEMS Fabs Manage Changing Dynamics, TechTALKS Stage South, Thursday, July 11, 2019, 12:15-12:40 p.m. Register today.
i“Status of the MEMS Industry report,” Yole Développement (Yole), 2019 Edition.
Maria Vetrano is a public relations consultant at SEMI.