MEMS and sensor devices continue to enable new and exciting functionalities and applications across all market segments – automotive, industrial, communications, consumer and computing. These new functions and applications come with a new set of challenges.

The creation and use of standard packaging platforms have pushed rapid commercialization of MEMS and Sensor devices. It fueled the next evolution, from a discrete single MEMS/sensor towards sensor fusion (multi-MEMS/sensor packages) which created more opportunities and applications.

As the market continues to grow, and applications continue to become more complex, the traditional package size reduction on the X, Y, Z axes are being replaced by the need to do more integration such as reducing the PCB module to a surface mountable SIP package. The need for heterogeneous integration (HI) becomes an essential part of the new standard MEMS and sensor package platforms. Increase complexities require advanced packaging technologies and final test, as well as a closer collaboration between the different stakeholders in the MEMS and sensor ecosystem.

This presentation will describe one aspect of the increasing complexity in MEMS foundry services including the resulting challenges and potential solutions.

The clear separation of raw wafer production, MEMS- and ASIC-manufacturing as well as packaging trend to vanish. Just some examples:

• The raw wafer type CSOI requires MEMS processing and application of the product design.
• Using the ASIC as cap for the MEMS requires stringent adaption of ASIC- and MEMS-design and -topography, as well as postprocessing of CMOS wafers in MEMS fabs.
• Also the combination of MEMS and ASIC portions on one piece of silicon drives the need for mixed-mode fabs
• Many MEMS types are made in ASIC facilities and in some cases, it is a pure question of definition, whether a product is named MEMS or ASIC, for example CMUTs or immobile optical MEMS architectures. This trend is accelerated by the need of typical CMOS tools, like ArF lithography for certain MEMS, like in some medical applications.
• 3D stacking of CMOS, MEMS and III/ / V semiconductors drive new production approaches
• Many more

Conclusions

Cost, size and performance requirements drive not only the transition from macromechanics to MEMS. It also supports an integration of MEMS and ASIC. Obviously, the alignment of ASIC and MEMS technology is crucial for the set up and the success. Additionally, some MEMS require processes, which are today available typically only in ASIC fabs, like lithography for narrow line widths, which are beyond i-line capability.

Cavity SOI is arising as a new category of raw wafer material. It provides additional options for future MEMS technologies. Since the mask layer “cavity” is designed depending on the product, a cooperation or merge of MEMS and raw wafer production is required.

The wafer fab to run such kind of mixed-mode device has to produce and control CMOS, MEMS and some assembly processes including cross contamination aspects.

MEMS inertial sensors, including gyroscopes and accelerometers, are key components in automotive applications like electronic vehicle stability control, advanced driver assistant systems and autonomous driving. The challenging automotive reliability requirements need to be considered when selecting the sensor packaging concepts.

Fan-out wafer level packaging (FO-WLP) provides large number of IOs and offers interesting opportunities for multi-die packaging with minimum package dimensions. Typically combined MEMS sensors for motion measurement are packaged in various standard or proprietary configurations, ceramic cavity packages, pre-molded plastic cavity packages, over-molded SOIC, PBGA. The demand is towards smaller foot print & height, lower cost and better robustness to vibration. FO-WLP offers some excellent characteristics, like small size and low stress to sensitive MEMS dies. Murata presentation is focused on explaining the FO-WLP Multi-die Inertial Sensor concept (gyroscope, accelerometer and IC), which was developed in EU collaboration project and evaluated against automotive requirements.

Medical devices are key to providing timely patient monitoring and treatment. This presentation provides an overview of the role of micro-technology in medical devices, the challenges related to their fabrication, and a view to emerging technologies. You will gain an understanding of BioMEMS devices, their markets, and Teledyne’s MEMS capabilities for their development and manufacture.

Microchannel particle deposition (MPD) is a wafer-scale thick-film deposition process used to accurately and in a scalable way deposit nanoparticles. Unique features include: 1) full wafers patterning in 15-minutes, 2) structures can be deposited with a size ranging from 1 – 50 microns and with high aspect ratios up to 5 and 3) full 3D-control of the printed structures. In addition, I can share some of the applications we’re focusing on such as: 1) printing sensing electrodes for metal oxide gas sensors, 2) printing of getters for microbolometers and 3) printing of porous electrodes for biosensing applications.

Metal oxide gas sensor example: Traditionally, sensing elements of metal oxide gas sensors are fabricated using drop-casting. Our MPD process is used as a superior alternative to fabricate these MOX sensors as its 10x more scalable, further reduces the form factor and lowers the power consumption by 5x. In addition, our MPD technology allows for the deposition of sensing element arrays, which enables detection of environmental gasses for safety, wildfire detection, methane detection, NOx/greenhouse gases.

Digital technologies are indispensable in today’s interconnected world. They drive economic growth, empower individuals, enable social networking, increase access to educational resources, empower telemedicine, enhance efficiency and productivity, and many more. Europe has been the birthplace to many scientific breakthroughs in the field of semiconductor and quantum technologies, but it is lagging in translating scientific achievements into market products. Often European innovators and start-ups struggle to raise necessary financial support to bring their products from lab to fab or scale up. European Innovation Council (EIC) as the largest public fund organization in the world that aims to identify, develop, and scale up breakthrough technologies and game changing innovations in Europe. This presentation will introduce EIC digital activities as well as EIC Funding opportunities for digital technologies, from responsible electronics to quantum technologies, in 2023.

There is strong interest in PiezoMEMS due to its unique piezoelectric effect property that enables precise control of mechanical motion, actuation, and sensing at the microscale, potential for miniaturization and integration, and their applicability across a wide range of applications.

However, piezoMEMS commercialization faces several challenges such as manufacturing scalability, integration challenges, reliability and rigorous testing and market adoption.

Addressing these challenges requires a collaborative effort among research institutions, MEMS manufacturers and industrial players to invest in research and development, materials and process characterization & optimization and reliability testing to drive a successful commercialization of PiezoMEMS devices. The 1st of its kind “Lab in the Fab” concept by Institute of Microelectronics (IME), ST Microelectronics and ULVAC, focusing on Piezo MEMS technology aims to accelerate and ease the transition from POC to volume production with the development of PiezoMEMS platforms.

IME ScAlN MEMS platforms integrates advanced modelling, simulation, and design tools with a comprehensive MEMS process building blocks, to enable faster prototyping and optimization of MEMS devices. These ScAlN MEMS platforms with distinct features will be showcased with examples of devices implementation for various applications, and are now available for application in MEMS-based products like speaker, PMUT, RF filter, etc.

As a globally leading supplier of MEMS microphones, Infineon has been driving audio innovation by enhancing SNR, AOP, and power consumption to pioneer new use-cases such as ANC in TWS and studio-quality audio recording with laptops. As the trend for better audio in communication and recording continues, new requirements have moved into the focus of device manufacturers. Sustainability, including extending the lifespan of products, recycling, and eco-design, is no longer an afterthought but has become a major sales argument. EU authorities are accelerating the trend through regulations and ecodesign labels, with the goal of shifting to a circular economy model and moving away from a linear economy model that consists of producing, consuming, and dumping.

MEMS microphones are particularly vulnerable components requiring external shielding against liquids, dust, light, ultrasound, compressed air, and electromagnetic interference. Through forward integration, our next generation of XENSIV™ MEMS microphones will take care of their own protection, thus lowering integration, testing, and repair costs. At Infineon, we believe that our next generation of XENSIV™ MEMS microphones can contribute to more sustainable and energy-efficient consumer electronics while maintaining superior audio quality.

We present a cutting-edge method for sound generation using actively modulated ultrasound. This innovative approach is specifically designed for MEMS technology, resulting in a smaller speaker with superior audio capabilities. We will provide detailed explanations of the speaker’s physics, implementation, and potential applications.

Large Language Models (LLM’s) are a truly transformative technology that will alter many aspects of our lives. It has quickly become apparent that the usefulness of these LLMs is multiplied by the exactness of the prompt, leading to a rise in prompt engineering. In this presentation we will discuss how sensors on devices will play a significant role in helping generate more useful and contextual prompts and how audio and voice might play a role in the future of this technology.

sensiBel is a Norwegian deep-tech scale-up company bringing to the market an optical MEMS microphone with 80dB SNR (14 dBA noise floor) and 132 dB dynamic range (146 dB Acoustic Overload Pressure or 10 % THD) in a small package.

This is a considerable improvement over state-of-the-art capacitive MEMS microphones. Despite constant improvement over the years, these are today limited to a SNR in the order of 73 dBA (21 dBA noise floor) with overall dynamic range in the order of 101 dB. There are fundamental challenges to driving the performance of capacitive MEMS microphone technology in small packages to new heights. Piezoelectric MEMS microphones have not demonstrated SNR performance >65 dBA.

We will present the fundamentals of optical acoustic transduction, explain why it can enable higher performance and how it can be implemented in a MEMS-based component.

Testing processes have a relevant impact on the semiconductor manufacturing effectiveness and, at the end, on the final product cost. This is especially true when we talk about MEMS devices, due to the fact that test equipment for MEMS is strongly application-dependent and scarcely reusable for different devices. For many years, both MEMS manufacturers and ATE/Handler suppliers have developed specific test equipment and instruments for every different type of MEMS.

However, having a completely different machine for each different product is becoming less and less efficient, as the number of devices increases exponentially. More and more companies are recognizing the need for a testing and handling solution that is suitable for the requirements of high-volume production lines, scalable, and convertible for different application technologies.

A standard test setup for MEMS includes a handler, test resources, and an interchangeable test unit able to stimulate the devices during the execution of the electrical test. The same test cell can accommodate the test units for testing different products, such as pressure sensors, accelerometer, gyroscopes, microphones, magnetic sensors, and many others.

The presentation explores the new opportunities offered by this integrated approach, focusing on the advantages – in terms of cost of test, performance and ROI. Specific application case studies will be presented, dedicated to inertial, pressure, and magnetic sensor testing.

Today, MEMS devices while continuing to maintain their novelty are for the most part no longer a new class of device technology – in fact the highest volume MEMS products IMUs, BAW/SAW filters, Microphones, Pressure Sensors, and Ink Jet devices are from a market entry perspective, considered mature. Despite this, they’re tirelessly evolving and continuing to bring new materials and unit process challenges. With each new design that leverages new materials or combinations of materials, together with increasingly challenging unit processes, the sophistication of the required metrology and inspection steps increases. This brief presentation will address a few of those challenges and explain the value that novel inspection and metrology capabilities can bring to both device manufacturers and equipment OEMs in characterizing their high-volume manufacturing processes and/or process development cycles. In doing so, optical critical dimension (OCD), infra-red (IR) inspection and acoustic metrology technologies will be highlighted in the context of IMU, Microphone, Piezo and finally bulk acoustic wave (BAW) filter device fabrication.

While deposition of Advanced Functional Materials remains at the core of building up MEMS devices, their combination and integration has become key for gaining traction in today’s applications.

From active piezoelectric sensing or actuating elements to heat dissipation layers, antireflective coatings, EMI shielding or stress compensation – the ultimate challenge is the Integration of Various Technologies into one device or package. Expertise in Material Science and Integration Technologies is what the market expects. Supporting manufacturers with a variety of deposition technologies such as PVD, PECVD and PEALD alongside clever tool concepts (batch, single wafer or inline), our customers benefit from EVATEC’s wide range of Know-How in Semiconductors, Optoelectronics, Advanced Packaging and Photonics.

Functional devices such as Piezo-MEMS, tunable devices, on-chip capacitors, emerging semiconductor memories and solid-state Li batteries are essential to realize “Smart Society”. “New Materials” especially multi-elements compound oxides such as perovskite ferroelectric materials (PZT, BST, etc.) which can enable these functional devices are gaining greater interests in industry. Meanwhile challenges are arising in processing these new materials into thin films and integrating them into functional device stacks mainly due to difficulties induced by material properties such as dielectric or insulating natures which are different from those of conventional metal or semi-conductive materials. One of the main critical processes to fabricate thin films is sputtering which facing same issues in processing these “New Materials” reliably and reproducibly. ULVAC has been successfully developing sputtering technology solution by innovative RF(Radio-frequency) sputtering technology as well as novel thin-film growth processes for functional devices manufacturing. This talk will provide a brief overview of this technology as well as its usefulness in realizing reliable processing and advanced material and devices properties with using PZT Piezo-MEMS as an example.

An introduction of AMEC to the major mems manufacturers in Europe focusing on strong company growth and showing AMEC as an international company. As the business level for AMEC with international customers increases, AMEC is expanding its manufacturing to Singapore. The status and plan for the new manufacturing facility and R&D Center will be shown.

In parallel to additive manufacturing leading the revolution in traditional manufacturing, the same principles can revolutionize traditional thin film deposition techniques. Where lithography and vapor phase deposition techniques struggle, for example, with device development for rapid innovation or incompatibility with the used chemistry, additive manufacturing can shine. Indeed, several approaches are in development for 3D nanopriting.1,2,3

Atomic Layer Deposition, and in more general Atomic Layer Processing, offers a unique opportunity for localized 3D processing/printing due to its two-step process. While simple in theory, due to well-developed examples of Spatial Atomic Layer Deposition (sALD), in practice miniaturization of sALD requires substantial effort into the creation of suitable micro-nozzles. Uniquely, ATLANT 3D has developed proprietary Spatial ALD micronozzles, naming the process microreactor Direct Atomic Layer Processing – µDALPTM. 4

In recent years, the team at ATLANT 3D has been able to significantly develop the technology to reduce the µDALPTM resolution, increase material capabilities, assessable morphologies, and develop new instruments for industrial scalable manufacturing. All of which enabling the development of novel MEMS sensors which will be covered in this talk including examples of recent development done by ATLANT 3D’s technology which is not possible with other thin film deposition techniques and lithography.

[1] Kundrata I. et al., ALD/ALE 2022 [Int. Conf.], 2022
[2] de la Huerta C. A. M. et al., arXiv, 2020, 0523.
[3] Winkler, R. et al., J. Appl. Phys., 2019, 125, 210901
[4] Kundrata I., et al., Small Methods., 2022, 6 (5), 2101546