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Micrel, an IC and MEMS foundry services provider based in Silicon Valley, has recently made moves to expand its MEMS services offering. The decision seems to be appropriate and timely, because of the limited number of MEMS production sites in the US. Founded in 1978, Micrel has a long track record of sustained profitability -- the company says that it has been profitable in 33 of its 34 years of its existence. Micrel went public in 1994 and has reportedly generated positive cash flows since that time. We spoke with Guy Gandenberger, Vice President of Worldwide Operations and Foundry Business Unit, about the company's history, recent MEMS related moves, and plans for the future.
Tronics said that this week that its revenues and profits exceeded expectations in 2012 due to strong growth of its high performance inertial sensor business, as well as a significant increase in its contract manufacturing customer base. The MEMS foundry services company, based in France, reported 2012 revenues of $22.1 million and profits of $2.4 million. Tronics also said that it expanded its investments in submicron and glass technologies.
memsstar, a Scotland-based provider of etch and deposition equipment for semiconductor and MEMS applications, announced this week the appointment of Tony McKie as its CEO. The company said that McKie is tasked with capitalising on the company's experience and reputation in the semiconductor and MEMS markets to drive its growth.
As the MEMS market forces continue to apply enormous pressures on device makers to reduce costs, companies are continually striving to make their development and manufacturing cycles more efficient. One approach has been to design around well-defined processes, or at least process modules, to accelerate time to market. We recently spoke with Alissa Fitzgerald of A.M. Fitzgerald & Associates and Peter Himes of Silex about their joint efforts in this area through a recently announced partnership. In this detailed interview, Alissa and Peter discuss the emerging trends with fabless MEMS manufacturing, provide an overview of existing commercial MEMS processes, address intellectual property and cost challenges, and explain their approach.
Silex Microsystems, recently ranked by Yole Développement as the world's largest pure-play MEMS foundry, announced this week that it has been awarded a nearly $450,000 research grant from VINNOVA, the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems, to develop cutting-edge ferromagnetic materials for use in MEMS devices powering next-generation smart phone applications. Silex reportedly was one of the companies chosen out of 340 applicants for this award. "Magnetic MEMS is a key material for future MEMS products because it enables multi-axis sensor integration," said Dr. Thorbjörn Ebefors, Chief Technologist at Silex Microsystems.
Tronics is reporting that it is growing strongly again. After an uninspiring 2009 and 2010, business started picking up in late 2010, and remained very healthy throughout 2011. The company had a revenue of $15.2 million in 2011, with a net profit of $1.24 million. Tronics said that it secured important new foundry and custom MEMS contracts during the year and its revenues grew significantly in its three key regions: Europe, United States, and China. With a strong balance sheet that includes more than $4 million cash and a debt-to-equity ratio below 30 percent, Tronics said it is well positioned to continue its expansion in 2012 and beyond. A 20-30% growth is expected in 2012 with further improvement of the company's profitability. According to Tronics, a very substantial portion of the 2012 revenues is already firmly secured.
by Xavier Rottenberg, Ph.D. Research Engineer, IMEC
Much of the future growth in the MEMS market is expected to come from products that are still in the early stages of development, or are yet to be invented. There is a considerable potential for new products in which innovative MEMS are integrated with highly miniaturized electronics. In small packages that miniaturize existing larger tools and extend their use and functionality, or that bring a totally new functionality that cannot be implemented otherwise. Some of the many domains where MEMS will become prevalent are sensing, localization, and visualization applications for personal consumer electronics, optical switching and processing chips, or sensors and actuators for medical and wellness applications.
TSVs, or through substrate vias, have become an increasingly important building block for CMOS MEMS integration, as well as for stacking of multiple IC chips. In this interview, we spoke with Tomas Bauer, VP of Sales and Business Development at Silex Microsystems about his perspective on the latest TSV trends. In particular, Tomas discusses TSV process parameters and sizes, existing and emerging applications, integration challenges, fill material comparisons and costs. He also discusses other materials for TSV substrates such as glass and silicon-glass hybrids.
Innovative Micro Technology (IMT), announced this week that Craig Ensley has joined IMT as President and CEO effective immediately. He succeeds Dr. John Foster, who is resigning from the company to become the CEO of one of IMT's major customers. Mr. Ensley brings over 30 years of executive leadership and semiconductor industry experience to IMT. "We're delighted to have Craig on board," commented Jose Suarez, an IMT Board Director. "Over the last decade MEMS has emerged as a mainstream technology and now represents one of the highest growth areas in the electronics industry. Craig's track record leading high growth entrepreneurial companies is a great addition to the company, and will build upon IMT's solid foundation as the leading MEMS manufacturer in the United States."
Devices, especially MEMS that have moving actuators, perform best inside the cleanroom. When taken out of the cleanroom, particles can hinder or degrade the performance, and lead to device failure. IMT, like many others in the industry, recognized the need to package these delicate devices at wafer level to ensure and optimize the device performance and shelf life. With the advancement of wafer bonding technologies and equipment, many MEMS devices in the market today are packaged at wafer level. At the same time, this progression has also led to the need for development of bond quality testing, especially useful for applications and devices that operate in either pressurized or vacuum environments. The most accurate method to determine the quality of a bond is to test for package hermeticity, which consists of fine and gross leak testing.
