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Article Excerpt
High-volume OEM sensor applications are greatly driven by the sensor's cost as well as its robustness, reliability, manufacturability, and ease of integration into the OEM's product or system. SBD perceives key opportunities (particularly in high volume markets/applications) for sensors that offer significant improvements in ease and cost of manufacturing and packaging.
We emphasize, however, that, to optimize their opportunities for replacing more conventional, well-established sensors, providers of innovative sensors that are designed to be less costly to make, package, and configure should focus on addressing specific current and emerging markets/applications where such attributes are particularly beneficial. It also is very beneficial to have a sensing technology that can be efficiently leveraged into diverse applications. Moreover, since the sensing requirements and preferences, and the health and prospects, of a particular market can fluctuate over time, the provider of such new, advanced sensors should constantly be flexible and be ready to adjust its market strategy and application focus to most effectively enter and penetrate especially suitable and attractive applications.
IC Mechanics, Inc. (Pittsburgh, PA, 412-682-5540)(www.icmechanics.com) has developed an innovative manufacturing and packaging technology for creating ultra low-cost, smart MEMS motion sensing and control ICs that are targeted at specific market segments where such features are highly desirable. Their integrated, high-performance inertial sensors contain a MEMS sensor on top of a standard commodity CMOS chip; and the MEMS sensing device is sealed onto the CMOS die using a proprietary capping technique.
Capping the MEMS sensors at the wafer level can significantly boost the robustness and reliability of MEMS sensor products. The ability to cap MEMS sensors at the wafer level, moreover, allows for using high-volume low-cost wafer dicing and packaging vendors when a low-cost plastic package is desired.
Such inertial sensors can provide a lower-cost, highly robust alternative to conventional MEMS inertial sensors in key established or emerging markets for inertial sensors/accelerometers, such as automotive (e.g., air bag deployment, active suspension, vehicle stability control, rollover detection), shipping and handling, computing/pointing devices (e.g., tilt sensors in cell phones, PDAs), electronic toys/games, industrial machinery monitoring, medical devices (e.g., pacemakers/defibrillators, home blood pressure monitors), sports (e.g., speed and distance monitors, pedometers)/physical therapy equipment, and washing machines (e.g., monitoring load imbalance).
In 2001, IC Mechanics completed its initial round of financing, totaling $5.1 million. Techno Venture Management led the round, which also included Draper Triangle Ventures, Hunt Ventures, G4 Partners, and Future Fund.
MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) technology has been driving key advances in smart sensing devices. Micromechanical devices integrated with sensing and control electronics allow for streamlining and improving sensing and control systems and can enable applications that were previously too costly. The integration of the sensing element...
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