MEMS | ARTICLE Te Solution
Enter RocketMEMS. In an age where MEMS devices are found as either off-the-shelf catalogue parts, or are the result of large investment development projects, a new category of ‘semi- customised’ MEMS is emerging, giving needed flexibility to a broad class of users without the investment of a custom product.
Te RocketMEMS programme was developed based on the belief that more system integrators and Original Equipment Manufacturers would employ MEMS sensors in their products if the sensors could be quickly and reliably configured for the OEM’s specific application.
In the RocketMEMS programme, customers need only to bring their specification, and several months later, receive finished MEMS sensors. AMFitzgerald translates the specification to a design, manages the chip fabrication, and handles the details necessary to deliver the final chips. Tere is no minimum order requirement, and if a Long Tail application grows to become a Mega Platorm, the RocketMEMS programme can scale chip volumes to meet the need.
RocketMEMS in Practice
From its launch in November 2012, the progress of RocketMEMS has been both rapid and significant.
Starting with the SmartBlock approach to process integration from Silex Microsystems, a MEMS foundry near Stockholm, Sweden, AMFitzgerald’s engineers created reference designs for MEMS piezoresistive pressure sensors with some standard (and useful) design variable options built-in.
Tese design variable options include: pressure range, pressure sensitivity, die size, die shape, device impedance, device equivalent circuit, pad size, pad location and more (figure 2).
Next, Silex successfully fabricated the first run of RocketMEMS silicon, giving the RocketMEMS reference pressure sensor design its ‘first spin’. Te up-front collaboration between AMFitzgerald’s designers and Silex’s process integration experts achieved successful first-pass delivery of MEMS pressure sensors (figure 3).
Once the RocketMEMS pressure sensors were back from Silex, the finished parts were packaged and tested to verify actual performance versus the original design specifications. Some of the performance tests included pressure and temperature sweeps, linearity and hysteresis measurements.
From its launch in November 2012, the progress
of RocketMEMS has been both rapid
and significant.
Data on these RocketMEMS pressure sensors are available upon request, as are RocketMEMS pressure sensor die samples. A RocketMEMS evaluation kit is also available. Te kit includes a development board and user interface soſtware for customer evaluation. More information may be found at: htp://www.
amfitzgerald.com/rocketmems.html.
<< Figure 3: AMFitzgerald’s RocketMEMS programme allows customisation of MEMS pressure sensors for the Long Tail marketplace at reduced cost, time, and risk.>>
36 | commercial micro manufacturing international Vol 7 No.6
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