Test challenges and opportunities was the recurring theme at this year’s MEMS/MST Industry Forum, held on October 6, 2008 at SEMICON Europa in Stuttgart, Germany. With “more markets than we can chase” and “a lot more functionality coming” mainstream test challenges are the industry’s biggest obstacles to growth, according to Rob O’Reilly, Analog Devices, during the opening keynote.

Outlining the healthy growth projected for the near-term, O’Reilly’s presentation entitled, “MEMS Everywhere” contrasted the early days of the MEMS industry where only a handful attended the SEMI MEMS Forum, from this year’s event featuring over 20 speakers and a packed conference center.

In reviewing the automotive market, O’Reilly indicated the early penetration of MEMS will only accelerate. In addition to passive safety systems such as airbags, the industry is moving toward intelligent vehicles with collision avoidance systems, vehicle dynamic control, crash detection, and body/chassis control systems, all enabled by MEMS devices.

Beyond automotive, MEMS applications are exploding in consumer markets, especially gaming, mobile communications, computers, power tools, and other applications. O’Reilly noted how the Nintendo Wii has had enormous impact on the market. And, the popular portrait/landscape feature in today’s Apple iPhone is just the beginning of new functionality appearing in mobile handsets. One new phone nearing introduction will include 13 different MEMS features, including drop protection, gesture recognition, pedometer, camera stabilization, and power management.

Slide: MEMS Test Costs. Courtesy of AMD

Richard Dixon from iSupply forecasts the MEMS market growing to $8.75 billion in 2012 (about 6% CAGR), up from $6.1 billion in 2006, yet MEMS sensors and actuators will grow 11% per year and MEMS sensors in mobile phones will grow 21% during this period. Jean-Christophe Eloy from Yole Developpement sees MEMS growing from 2.1 billion units last year to 8 billion in 2012.

While average selling prices of devices have dropped from several dollars to less than a dollar over the past 10 years, the cost of test has steadily increased. Guido Dupont from Melexis, a fables developer of MEMS devices, has utilized built-in self test (BIST) to lower the cost of test for automotive gyroscopes. BIST routines are run during start up, on demand and for calibration. He sees test requirements growing in complexity, with applications needing high temperatures, greater accuracy and faster throughout.

Frank Grossman of SPEA GmbH also sees pressures on test as products get more complex, smaller and consumer price pressures increase. His company is addressing the need through higher precision/accuracy, BIST and DFT, special handling needs for MEMS devices, and integrating the physical stimulation and actuation needs for pressure, location, and motion testing. He said that SPEA is expanding traditional ATE performance through Technology Replaceable Instrumentation Modules (TRIMS), scalable architecture, open systems, and re-programmable I/O pin electronics. They have integrated the ATE functionality, special handling and DUT requirements, and physical stimulation tools into an integrated test cell approach especially for the MEMS industry.

Multitest has also addressed the specialized testing needs of the MEMS industry with highly configurable, convertible, functional and integrated test platforms. Andreas Nagy described several specialized test solutions for MEMS devices including a standardized test platform that features tri-temp capability, singulated device handling, wide-range of stimulus features, device tracking, and high parallelism.

The nature of MEMS devices and technologies also has generated a need for more advanced and specialized inspection devices. Peter Czurratis from SAM TEC presented new developments in high throughput scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM). SAM technology operates by the pulse detection where high frequency electromagnetic vibrations are propagated as a plane parallel wave field inside the acoustic lens. The sound field can be transformed into electromagnetic signals and converted into pixels with resolution comparable to X-ray, but with fast throughput.

Yves Emery from Lycee Tec presented the latest developments in Digital Holography Microscopy (DHM) for static and dynamical 3D characterization of MEMS and Moems devices. His single and dual wavelength holography solution can characterize height in 3D with high accuracy, and surface characteristics such as planarity, reflectivity and roughness.

The MEMS marketplace and manufacturing landscape will be undergoing significant change in the next three years. Currently, the market is highly fragmented with over nearly 300 companies, 250 generating less than $35 million in revenues. Recent investment in 200 mm fabs has been significant, but equipment spending will remain flat next year as the market absorbs the extra capacity. Exciting developments in Through Silicon Via (TSV) technology will also impact the MEMS market and probably yield converging solutions, technologies and competencies. The biggest change may be the impending entrance into the market by large foundries including TSMC and UMC. Yet driven by strong automotive and consumer applications, and emerging high-growth biomedical segments, MEMS will play an increasingly larger role in our lives, and a larger role in advanced semiconductor manufacturing.