Abstract:
The MEMS industry has experienced tremendous growth in the past 5 years, driven primarily by the inclusion of motion tracking devices, among a variety of MEMS-based sensors, in smart phones and other consumer electronic devices. Growth is expected to accelerate as Internet of Things (IoT) devices proliferate enabling the cloud to connect with, and sense, the ambient world in order to make intelligent real time decisions. The IoT promises a new economy built on services created by analyzing the data collected from up to 1 trillion smart, sensing “things”. An inherent assumption is that because silicon integrated circuits are small, low cost, power efficient, and reliable, MEMS devices can be the same – after all MEMS are built from the same materials and processes in the same factories. But, a mechanical transducer must interact with the physical world it is sensing and it is this simple principle that forces a significantly different approach to creating reliable systems. Significant opportunities exist in the supply chain to standardize design, testing, and packaging processes for sensor systems in the same way it has been done for integrated circuits. While the MEMS industry has successfully scaled so far, the expansion of the IoT will required new innovations from the supply chain.