Right design, manufacturing approach to MEMS devices

Venkat Bahl, VP of Marketing, Discera, talked to ECN Asia regarding the state of MEMS technology and market. Excerpts:



What are the latest technology advancements in MEMS resonators? How do you differentiate your product from others out in the market?

MEMS resonators have been in development for more than a decade. Discera has arguably the broadest portfolio of resonators in the world – ranging from KHz to GHz range. We have picked one of these resonators to productize and enter into the market, targeting the high-volume consumer electronics, as well as industrial and military grade applications. We have our own platform made completely of silicon called the PureSilicon technology platform. As a result, our products are scalable in terms of size, volume, and using standard CMOS processes. There have been a lot of groups that are/have been trying to get products into volume production, but with MEMS it is important to understand the various interplays between design, manufacturing, packaging, and reproducibility. Discera has pioneered MEMS work with timing products. Our ability to meet customer demands of reliability and quality makes our products unique, and positions the company as a leader in the market.

The variety of specialized MEMS fabrication processes has contributed to higher commercialization cost and longer time to market. What are the steps to be done to change this?

This is a true statement. As more and more devices are being manufactured, however, the abilities and tools available to the foundries and MEMS companies are increasing, and this allows for a more standardized approach to designing and manufacturing MEMS devices. In the near term, there is still going to be specialization and customization that has to be done, but over time it is conceivable that the MEMS processes will get more standardized, much like CMOS processes have been standardized. Discera has been cognizant of not having to reinvent the wheel. As a result we have been able to create a portable design that allows us to move into different fabs quickly, and have been able to leverage the works that has already been done in the industry as applicable to our designs.



Who is your foundry partner?

We use DALSA for our MEMS fab, and austriamicrosystems for our clock ASIC device. Together, the MEMS and clock ASIC constitute an oscillator. Meanwhile, UTAC Thailand is our back-end supplier for packaging and assembly.



What are the tech challenges in digital consumer and mobile applications that your products/solutions can address?

The products for the digital consumer and mobile application markets have a limited shelf life so it is important to expedite ramp-to-volume production to satisfy customer needs. If you miss the production cycle, it is hard to recover. Quartz-based oscillators have a limited ability to quickly scale. Discera is tapping into large existing infrastructures based on CMOS technology that gives us huge capacities very quickly. Additionally, there is a huge demand for small packages. Our resonators (the frequency source, which we make out of CMOS using the MEMS techniques, as opposed to quartz) are less than 1/10th the size of equivalent quartz-based crystals. We have been able to reduce the size multiple times over the last couple of years while maintaining the same performance, and we will further reduce the size over the next year(s). Another area of differentiation is low active and standby power consumption, which we are also able to deliver.



What percentage of your business is from Asia? How do you plan to grow business in this region?

Asia is by far the most important market for us. Right now the region is contributing 25 percent of our business, but this will quickly become the largest market for us. It is where we have invested the most amount of time in building sales and distribution channels. We spend a lot of our resources in Asia as this is where our customers design, build and sell many of their products. Asian customers are very aggressive and open to innovation. We have been investing in bringing direct resources to Singapore and Shenzhen, as well as expanding our distributors and stocking representative channels to cover all the major countries and markets in Asia.



What’s in store for the global MEMS market next year?

There are a lot of industry forecasts for MEMS showing high growth, including areas such as DLP for TVs, ink jet heads for printers, gyros for cameras, etc. In the timing industry where quartz has been around for a long time, we believe that MEMS, especially our PureSilicon MEMS technology and products, are poised to have a big impact on the market in a quick period of time. We expect to achieve a high growth path not just for next year, but for the next several years.