CIS

MEMS and image sensors are shining stars in the chip industry as technology companies worldwide accelerate innovation in the fight against COVID-19. The tiny devices are behind advances in areas of electronics ranging from thermal imaging and faster point-of-care testing to microfluidics-based polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tools and techniques to detect SARS-CoV-2.SEMI recently spoke with Yole Développement analysts Dimitrios Damianos and Chenmeijing Liang about MEMS and imaging sensors market trends and how microelectronics-enhanced technologies are supporting the worldwide push to contain the spread of COVID-19.For additional insights on the technologies, join the SEMI MEMS Imaging Sensors Summit, held for the first time at SEMICON Europa, 12-13 November 2020 in Munich, Germany. Registration is open.SEMI: Despite the global pandemic, the MEMS and sensors market is still growing and is one of the healthiest industries, not only in Europe, but globally. What is driving this growth?Damianos: MEMS have been continuously evolving from the first sensors that were measuring pressure and acceleration to rotation sensing and visible light management followed by light sensing beyond visible and the expansion to ultrasound and multi-spectral. Now we are heading towards an era where we want to sense every aspect of our environment, with more processing and eventually analytics bringing more quality to the data.COVID-19 has impacted various global markets in very different ways. While automotive, mobility and civil aviation have suffered, the impact on telecommunications and medical has been positive. The effects on the consumer, mobile and industrial markets have been moderate. Moreover, COVID-19 is changing the perception of the current global supply chain in manufacturing, potentially leading to more localized value chains and further regionalization in order to minimize similar risks posed by the pandemic and the first lockdown.SEMI: Who are the main MEMS players based on your research? Damianos: For MEMS players, the picture in 2019 was not the same as 10 years ago, when Texas Instruments (TI) and Hewlett-Packard (HP) were leading the scene, with Bosch and ST Microelectronics following, all at comparable revenue levels. Now, Broadcom and Bosch lead with almost $1.4 billion in revenue each, and the rest of the MEMS key stakeholders compete in the $400 million to $600 million league. Microphone players profited from the voice interface adoption trend, while players active in MEMS for mobility and smartphones suffered slightly due to weak end-system demand.SEMI: What scenarios can we expect for each market with regard to the impact of COVID-19 on MEMS for 2020? Damianos: For 2020, at Yole Développement we expect the consumer market to contract slightly by 2.6%, with the automotive market to dip by 27.5%, and defense and aerospace by 20.5%. For the defense market, no major effect is expected, as all major programs still run for the year. The market may experience some slight delays in deliveries due to supply chain and logistics problems. However, sensors integrated in commercial/civil aerospace applications will suffer due to the general paralysis of the air travel industry. On the positive side, telecommunications could increase by 4.7%, medical applications by 10.6%, and industrial by 11.5%.Due to the global pandemic, some types of MEMS have spiked in demand this year. For example, demand for thermopiles and microbolometers used in temperature guns and thermal cameras has increased because of the need for contactless monitoring of people’s temperatures. Moreover, microfluidics for DNA sequencing and real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) diagnostic tests for detecting COVID-19 are gaining market relevance, with the latter serving as a premier method of detecting a bacteria or virus on the molecular level with high degrees of accuracy. Furthermore, pressure and flowmeters in ventilators will grow because of huge demand by hospital intensive care units (ICUs).SEMI: What growth trends do you predict for the long haul?Damianos: In the longer term, we expect global MEMS volumes to almost double, from 24.4 billion units in 2019 to 50.8 billion units in 2025, with a 13% CAGR during the same period. The global MEMS market could reach $17.7 billion in revenue by 2025.We see a trend to more wearable devices integrating a lot of sensors but also a move to a more consumer-oriented healthcare. Moreover, everything related to voice interfaces and voice/virtual-personal assistants (VPAs) will continue to see strong growth, increasing demand for MEMS mics with better quality and high-fidelity voice capture. MEMS devices are shifting to higher accuracy, ultra-low power, embedded intelligence and possibly some bio-compatibility for medical applications.MEMS players will try to escape the commoditization cycle and deliver more value by increasing the value of the data, either grouping many sensors to create sensor hubs or by adding processing, algorithms and software. Industry players are employing strategies such as adding extra processing close to the sensor (e.g. Knowles) or ameliorating the use cases of their applications of their clients (e.g. Bosch or ST). AI on the edge seems very alluring for extra value acquisition, with many startups already working on it. Some examples include always-on-sensing (Aspinity in collaboration with Infineon, Syntiant), echolocation (IMERAI) and predictive maintenance using inertial sensors (Cartesiam). This will be the next pit stop for MEMS technology for sure. SEMI: The CMOS Image Sensor (CIS) is a cornerstone technology in the development of devices powered by machine sensing and artificial intelligence (AI) for applications such as advanced driver assistance system (ADAS). CIS powers many of the ongoing revolutions in new technical products and use cases. What is the status of the image sensors industry? Liang: Last year was exceptional with a combination of high demand and high prices due to capacity limitations. Q4 2019 went way above the forecast, and, in the end, the CIS industry reached $19.3 billion for the full year. This year, we think it will return to normal, and, despite the pandemic impact, we expect significant growth in the range of 7% to 12%. Last year’s 25% year-over-year (YOY) growth was the highest we’ve seen over the past decade. Mobile still dominates the marketplace for CIS with 69% market share. Two markets, computing (8%) and consumer (5%), are adjacent to the mobile market but progressively losing ground due to the smartphone disruption.Security, at 6% market share, will probably be the second largest CIS market in the future. Although this is an area of excellence for the emerging Chinese players, unfortunately, they could be hit by the current trade war. The automotive market did very well from 2018 to 2019 because of the numerous applications recently developed for ADAS, viewing, and in-cabin applications. Lastly, the industrial camera applications benefited from large investments in automation, especially in the semiconductor and automotive industries, but here again many uncertainties remain as these markets will reshuffle in the post COVID-19 world. SEMI: Which CIS markets are most susceptible to seasonality and the impact of COVID-19?Liang: According to our quarterly CIS monitor, automotive and security were both negatively impacted by the pandemic beyond what we expected in terms of seasonality. For computing, the situation improved just prior the lockdown. Q1 got a positive impact with high sales results for laptops and tablets, but no significant impact was seen for security equipment. For automotive, the demand for cameras was very high in Q1, which is seasonally normal, despite the decrease of car shipments that followed later. The automotive CIS market in 2020 should remain relatively flat compared to 2019 due to the higher attachment rates of cameras despite the lower number of cars produced. Consumer and industrial segments dropped in Q1, which is typical early in the year.The next five years might be a bit slow, and although we forecast growth for the next year, in the future the market share will be lower in mobile. In fact, mobile CIS growth will fall below the CIS growth average, but we will see an increase of market share for the security, automotive and industrial segments. The CIS market could reach $28 billion in 2025.At first, COVID-19 had a limited impact on the production side, as factories in China are usually closed for the New Year holiday, when the pandemic started. While supply is currently recovering, we still consider the limited impact on demand. Smartphone production for 2020 will be down 6%, but camera shipments for mobile should increase about 10% this year. Another positive trend for the mobile market is optical fingerprint implementation. Currently, high-end Android phones use this kind of technology. For 2023, we estimate optical fingerprint technology revenue to be over $1 billion.The roadmap for the automotive market is driven by camera proliferation. We’ll see 10 cameras per car and more for some high-end vehicles. Increasing demand for safety and convenience will mean more cameras per car in the future. With a strong attachment rate, the market average in automotive is around 2.0 cameras per car nowadays, and we expect the market average to reach 3.5 cameras per car in 2025. In security, Charge Coupled Device (CCD)-based cameras are nearly out of the market, as CMOS-based IP cameras are most important now.SEMI: What are current key technology trends?Liang: 3D semiconductor technology is the hot topic. CIS wafer staking technology is indeed at the center of the CIS technology race. Future applications could be AI analytics or recently developed applications on new types of CIS. So far, we have seen the introduction of variants of the CIS pixel. Global shutter (GS) and indirect Time of Flight (iToF) were recently introduced, and now direct time-of-flight (dTOF) pixels are being used in high volume. 3D semiconductor technology is a bonanza for the industry, as it allows to pack more value in a single chip. While the surface of silicon is still increasing, additional silicon is added through stacking.With COVID-19 still a problem, the endpoint for smartphones in 2020 remains uncertain. The short-term impact for CIS will be slower growth with respect to the 25% YoY of last year. The downturn in car production will be mitigated by an increased attachment rate for automotive cameras. The security market will also help maintain CIS growth.For more insights, see the following reports: Status of the MEMS Industry 2020 3D Imaging and Sensing 2020 CIS Market Monitor Q2 2020 Dimitrios Damianos is a technology and market analysts at Yole Développement covering MEMS, Sensors, Photonics and Imaging. Chenmeijing Liang is a technology and market analysts at Yole Développement covering Imaging. Serena Brischetto is senior manager of Marketing and Communications at SEMI Europe.

Part 2 of 2-part series on MSEC 2019 highlights. Read Part 1. Neural Networks on ChipTo be sure, low power is king when bringing machine learning to the sensor edge. Battery-powered, always-on sensing devices require it since frequent recharging is the death knell of any electronic product. That’s why semiconductor companies are offering new ways to conserve power.“MEMS sensor suppliers have made significant strides in the power, size and performance of their devices,” said Aspinity CEO Tom Doyle. “Yet these gains deliver only incremental power improvements to the system.”Doyle advocates a new architectural model that uses an analog neuromorphic processor to analyze all sensor data at the start of the signal chain instead of sending it downstream so power-hungry chips such as DSPs can digitize it before analysis.“The technology industry wants to take advantage of the many benefits of always-on sensing applications,” said Doyle. “Before we can reach mass proliferation, however, we need to resolve the power issues that are deal-breakers for some applications. We believe the answer to this challenge is architectural. All the data gathered by always-on sensing systems is analog in nature, yet as soon as it’s captured, it’s digitized immediately for analysis. Determining which data is important up front eliminates the digitization and processing of irrelevant data so that voice-first devices such as smart speakers and wearables/hearables can run for long periods of time without requiring battery recharge.”Syntiant CTO Jeremy Holleman agreed that on-device intelligence is the future.“Did you just fall? Is your heartrate a bit off? Deep learning provides a toolset that yields vastly superior decisions,” said Holleman. “The problem is that deep learning is computationally intensive. The answer is a neural network that performs on-device edge inferencing.”Holleman added that Syntiant’s neural decision processor was recently certified as Amazon Voice Service (AVS)-compliant for wake-word detection, making it easier to design voice control in battery-powered devices such as earbuds and wearables.MSEC Technology Showcase WinnerWith the groundswell of interest in intelligence at the edge, it was no surprise that Cartesiam won top honors among all competitors in the MSEC Technology Showcase for its NanoEdge AI, software that brings AI to the edge of the signal chain, making it easier for designers to create intelligent objects that can learn and understand.“Unlike other AI algorithmic technologies for sensing devices, NanoEdge enables both learning and inference at the edge, providing accurate and adaptive intelligence,” said Cartesiam Managing Director and Co-founder Marc Dupaquier, who accepted the award. “It’s also the only tool of its kind that does not require data scientists on board for implementation, which saves a tremendous amount of money. Our clients can build a machine learning library and embed it into their own code within weeks to realize the same caliber of unsupervised neural network that was once the exclusive domain of AI cloud vendors.”MSIG 2019 Hall of FameAt this year’s conference, MSIG Director Carmelo Sansone recognized two longtime contributors to the commercialization of MEMS and sensors: Peter G. Hartwell, Ph.D., chief technology officer at InvenSense, a TDK group company; and Thomas Kenny, professor and senior associate dean of engineering at Stanford University.Hartwell leads technology strategy and the InvenSense advanced technology research group. He has more than 25 years’ experience commercializing silicon MEMS products, including advanced sensors and actuators, and developing MEMS testing techniques.Kenny’s academic accomplishments include authoring or co-authoring more than 250 scientific papers and holding 50 issued patents. He has also advised more than 50 graduated Ph.D. students from Stanford.MSEC 2020Mark your calendar for next year’s MSEC, October 12-14, at Coronado Island Marriott Resort Spa in Coronado, Calif. Get updates from MSIG on MSEC and other upcoming events including MSTC 2020.Stay in Touch with MSIGMEMS Sensors Industry Group (MSIG), a SEMI Strategic Association Partner, is the industry association representing the global MEMS and sensors supply chain. To learn how MSIG enables professionals in the MEMS and sensors industry to innovate, address common challenges and accelerate business results, visit us today.Connect with MSIG on Twitter and LinkedIn. Subscribe to SEMI Blog: Technology and Trends.Maria Vetrano is a public relations consultant at SEMI.

SEMI spoke with Dr. Mikko Söderlund, sales director for Beneq’s semiconductor business, about trends in Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) applications. Söderlund shared his views ahead of his presentation at SEMI MEMS Imaging Sensors Summit, 25-27 September, 2019, at the WTC in Grenoble, France. Join us at the event to meet Beneq and other key industry influencers. Registration is open.SEMI: The Backside Illuminated (BSI) CMOS Image Sensors (CIS) market continues to experience steady growth. Which applications are currently driving market growth?Söderlund: BSI CMOS Image Sensor market continues to be driven by mobile, security, automotive and Internet of Things (IoT) applications – so there seems to be plenty of opportunities for BSI CIS market to grow further.SEMI: What is critical for advanced thin-film deposition methods to extract best electrical performance?Söderlund: It is critical to control the material properties of the deposited layer (such as charge density, resistivity or barrier property) and of course, film uniformity and conformality. Furthermore, controlling material interfaces is also important, especially for sensitive III-V materials. {% video_player "embed_player" overrideable=False, type='scriptV4', hide_playlist=True, viral_sharing=False, embed_button=False, width='350', height='197', player_id='12721134435', style='margin: 0px auto; display: block; float: right; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; width: 350px;' %} Coatings and material features based on existing standard techniques can be very expensive, or not feasible at all. What does Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), as a thin film coating method, offer in particular?Söderlund: ALD offers dense, highly conformal and pinhole-free best-in-class functional layers for dielectrics, passivation, encapsulation and much more. As a gentle and precise layer-by-layer method, ALD is extremely well-suited for deposition of such performance critical layers over large surface areas such as a cassette of wafers.SEMI: Please describe the Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) coating process. Söderlund: ALD is based on a self-limiting surface reaction controlled thin film deposition. During coating, two or more chemical vapors or gaseous precursors react sequentially on the substrate surface, producing a solid thin film (see schematic below). Most ALD coating systems use a flow-through traveling wave setup, where an inert carrier gas flows through the system and precursors are injected as very short pulses into this carrier flow. The carrier gas flow takes the precursor pulses as sequential waves through the reaction chamber, followed by a pumping line, filtering systems and, eventually, a vacuum pump.SEMI: What are the two leading edge ALD applications?Söderlund: Today’s leading-edge ALD applications are in logic (high-k/metal gate, multiple patterning) and memory (DRAM capacitor, 3D NAND). Within the More-than-Moore (MtM) markets, CIS and MEMS (actuators and sensors, RF) have been early adopters of ALD, and we also see ALD being introduced in GaN Power and RF, as well as photonics.SEMI: Give us one prediction about the opportunities offered by advanced imaging applications.Söderlund: The large diversity of imaging applications will continue to drive growth and innovation. For example, machine vision is expected to transform the imaging landscape. We see this as a big opportunity for advanced thin-film deposition methods such as ALD, provided that the tools are versatile enough to address the diverse manufacturing requirements.SEMI: What are your expectations for SEMI MEMS Imaging Sensors Summit and why do you invite your peers to attend? Söderlund: The summit brings together all key RF stakeholders in the MEMS and imaging sensors industry, and we are looking forward to a great event. It’s a special event for us as we are officially launching a new ALD cluster tool product specifically engineered for the MtM applications – so this brings great excitement that we want to share with the attendees.Dr. Mikko Söderlund is Sales Director for Beneq’s semiconductor business. He has more than 20 years of experience in product development, product management, technical sales and business development across the photonics, OLED, and semiconductor industries. Mikko received his Ph.D. in Micro- and Nanotechnology from the Helsinki University of Technology. Serena Brischetto is a marketing and communications manager at SEMI Europe.