Mobile Technology
Why innovation in MEMS technology is impacting the future of mobile phones
By Dr. Josep Montanyà i Silvestre, CEO at Nanusens
O
ver the last few decades there have been many exciting developments in the mobile phone industry. Smartphones are now an essential part of
our daily lives. Innovation has accelerated in order to meet the growing demand for the smaller, smarter, faster and more energy efficient chips needed for the next generation of mobile phones. Different technical advances are in progress that will impact on the future of mobile phones. One of these is MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) technology. This is when there are semiconductor chips with nano-mechanical devices inside. Modern MEMS looks set to resolve a major challenge facing mobile phone developers.
Challenges in the mobile phone sector
Although there is a great sense of anticipation about the huge potential of 6G, certain technology challenges have to be overcome to enable 6G to be implemented at scale. One key issue is that 6G mobile
22 June 2026
phones will be required to operate at a broader range of frequency bands and often at higher frequencies. This means that the antenna tuning circuit on the RF front end will need to be rebuilt. For 5G, phones use a set of distinct capacitors on a PCB, which are connected and disconnected to the antenna in real time by a separate control chip using Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) technology. At higher frequencies this leads to ohmic losses and the antenna efficiency drops down significantly. Furthermore, the linearity requirements for 6G cannot be met by SOI solid state switches.
MEMS solution to enable 6G Nanusens has developed a MEMS technology that can be leveraged for use in the mobile phone sector. Traditional MEMS can involve bespoke processes and production on custom lines by specialized companies. This can make it very expensive and difficult to scale up. Nanusens has a technology which allows nanoscale structures to be built with the metal layers of a CMOS chip at a CMOS fab, which radically cuts the costs. This technology
Components in Electronics
can be implemented to create digitally tunable MEMS capacitors with the CMOS layers. These RF Digitally Tunable Capacitors (DTCs) offer the solution that is required for antenna tuning in the RF front end of 6G phones.
The Nanusens nano-mechanical devices are developed using the metal layers in the back-end of the CMOS wafer. Some of the silicon oxide that is surrounding the layers is etched away by applying Hydrofluoric Acid to the wafer during the vapor stage (vHF) using standard equipment. The vHF etches away the silicon oxide around the metal layers through the pad opening placed above the MEMS cavity. This occurs once the CMOS process is completed and it is a maskless and straightforward process that normally only takes 30 minutes.
RF Digitally Tunable Capacitors (DTCs)
With Nanusens, the nanoscale capacitors are embedded into the same chip as the control circuitry, which results in a much smaller, single chip solution than
the SOI approach, and delivers higher levels of performance, power-efficiency and reliability. Tests on these capacitors for 5G show that there is a 90 per cent increase in talk times. For 6G, the power- efficiency at the antenna can be increased even further by using this technology. As production is located in giant CMOS fabs, the MEMS can be generated in huge volumes. This means that it is possible to meet the massive demand for use in 6G phones.
The future of mobile phones The Nanusens team has used its silicon- proven technology for building MEMS structures within the CMOS layers to create digitally tunable capacitors that deliver lower losses, higher linearity, lower distortion and faster data stream capabilities. It’s an exciting time for the mobile technology market, with advances like this coming down the line that will impact positively on the future of mobile phones.
https://www.nanusens.com/
www.cieonline.co.uk
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