medical devices

New treatments for vascular disease. Optimized agricultural production. Beefed up performance of wearable devices and flexible displays. Four students with their sights set on making the world a better place won Innovators of the Future awards at the 20th Annual FLEX Conference in late February after presenting novel ideas for advancing flexible electronics in the popular student poster event. It was clear that all of these young innovators are working on projects with the potential to impact our lives in the near future. Their work is critical to advancing products, devices and basic research in flexible electronics. Posters created by the 17 students who competed for the awards were judged by a multidisciplinary panel of industry experts. The posters reflected a broad range of applications enabled by flexible hybrid devices and covered technology for wearables, medical devices and precision agriculture. Innovators of the Future Award Winners Robert Herbert from the Georgia Institute of Technology won first place for his paper Smart and Connected Stent System with Nanomembrane Soft Sensors for Wireless Monitoring of Hemodynamics. Vascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for over 30% of all fatalities. Early diagnosis and monitoring blood pressure and flow rates are critical to effective treatment. Herbert’s poster introduced a less costly, less invasive and more revealing (spoiler alert) sensor system that uses a flexible, wireless biosensor system with an inductive medical stent and capacitive pressure sensors. The laser-machined stent uses multi-layered material integration to function as an inductive coil for wireless communication while maintaining mechanical properties similar to conventional vascular stents. The stent and sensor system can be easily deployed using conventional catheter procedures. Watch his presentation. Jose Waimin from Purdue University’s School of Materials Engineering was one of two second-place winners for his poster that shows how real-time monitoring of ion concentration, moisture, pH, microbial activity and other key metrics in agricultural production can optimize crop yields while reducing environmental impacts. His work presented a scalable alternative for manufacturing low-cost flexible sensors that can be used in an array of applications. Electrodes are manufactured in a Roll-to-Roll (R2R) process to enables fast production at a very low cost per device. Watch his talk. Benham Garakani from Binghamton University, Center for Advanced Microelectronics Manufacturing (CAMM) was the other second-place winner for his paper Electromechanical Behavior of Flexible Silver Paste and Highly Stretchable Liquid Metal for Wearable Electronics. Garakani explored how to improve fabrication of reliable, comfortable wearable devices to boost performance and functionality using substrates such as nonwoven high-density polyethylene fibers (HDPE) and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). Garakani also examined the electromechanical reliability of screen-printed silver trace on HDPE fibers and stencil-printed liquid metal (Ga-In-Sn alloy) on TPU during isothermal fatigue cycling. Watch his presentation. Sridhar Sivapurapu from the Georgia Institute of Technology won third place for his poster Flexible and Ultra-Thin 30µm Glass Substrates for RF and mmWave Flex Applications. Sivapurapu’s poster addressed the increasing demand for maximizing the mechanical flexibility of flexible displays while maintaining or improving their electrical performance. Sivapurapu focused on both electrical and mechanical properties for determining the viability of ultra-thin glass stack-ups for flexible RF applications by benchmarking the electrical performance of the ultra-thin glass stack-up to 110 GHz. He also examined electrical characterization during bending tests using free arc bending. Watch his talk. The Innovators of the Future award was sponsored by FlexEnable, a technology provider that develops flexible organic electronics technologies and OTFT materials. All FLEX Conference 2021 presentations are available through March 26, 2021 by registering for the event. Gity Samadi is co-chair of the FLEX Conference student poster awards and program manager at SEMI FlexTech.

The BioMEMS market is becoming increasingly diverse, encompassing gas and pressure sensors, ultrasound, specialized biomedical sensors, and other types of MEMS and microfluidic chips used for drug delivery and analytical applications. The BioMEMS market is also growing steadily: Research firm Yole Développement predicts that BioMEMS will grow at 14.9% CAGR from 2017-2023, reaching US$6.9B by 2023.1 As a high-value market, BioMEMS is worth pursuing as long as you can manage the complexities of manufacturing, including a sometimes-fragmented supply chain. Fortunately, the MEMS manufacturing ecosystem is evolving to accommodate the needs of companies that are in the process of commercializing BioMEMS-enabled products. Understanding the ecosystem’s shifting dynamics will help BioMEMS to flourish in this promising while often-challenging market segment.Unique Product, Unique ProcessIn the world of semiconductor manufacturing, it is routine for a fab to manufacture hundreds of different device designs using just a handful of process nodes. Semiconductor foundries share their design rules with customers, who then develop the mask set accordingly, literally adapting their designs to fit the rules for manufacturing on one of the foundries’ process nodes. In stark contrast, most MEMS devices cannot conform to the level of standardized manufacturing processes that work so well for semiconductors. Rather, MEMS challenges us to develop individualized processes for each device. It’s one product, one process.New BioMEMS designs generally emerge from either corporate R D or academia, two groups that approach specialized MEMS foundries such as ours when they’re entering pilot or low-volume production. Today successful commercialization depends on open, accurate communication and close collaboration. MEMS foundries must work side-by-side with designers to ensure that designs are based on real-world manufacturing process technologies. This highly customized manufacturing model makes it very difficult to support future demand for the groundswell of diverse BioMEMS devices that are in development. If we want to handle this upward trajectory of BioMEMS, we’ll need to adapt.Change the ModelWhile most existing MEMS foundries currently support a wide variety of devices types, I predict that market forces will cause our foundries to move toward specialization. Some companies will specialize in what they already do best, e.g., inertial sensors for the automotive industry. Others might choose to develop their foundry business around a purpose-built facility, which, for example, only manufactures microfluidics or magnetic devices. Larger enterprises might opt to build captive foundries that are designed to serve their specific needs. Get Creative: Combine, CollaborateSatisfying the thriving market for BioMEMS will require creativity. One idea: combine different disciplines of the manufacturing process at the same foundry. For example, we could have a biochemistry fab and a MEMS fab under the same roof, or we could have a MEMS fab and a packaging facility in one building. While these approaches may not yet exist outside of academia, necessity may drive them to fruition.It will also require heightened strategic collaboration, a process that has already begun. To support both large volumes and greater diversity of devices, some MEMS foundries are building cooperative relationships with former competitors. Think of it as a restructuring of the supply chain.Embracing the special challenges of BioMEMS manufacturing is worth our investment in time and resources. We need to step back, individually and collectively, to understand where each of the existing MEMS foundries fits into the new supply chain so we can leverage our strengths. We can start by forging stronger alliances for tech transfer. Once we more freely share information as we engage in joint product development — involving technology teams who are more connected and less guarded — we will expedite tech transfer and manufacturability.While we are unlikely to achieve the same level of standardization that has enabled the semiconductor industry to reach its great heights, as long as we evolve to meet demand, we will grow together and prosper.To learn more about this topic, meet with Jessica Gomez at the upcoming SEMI-MSIG MEMS Sensors Executive Congress (October 22-24, 2019 in Coronado, Calif.) or email her: [email protected][1] “BioMEMS Emerging Non-Invasive Biosensors: Microsystems for Life Sciences Healthcare 2018 Report,” Yole Développement, https://yole-i-micronews-com.osu.eu-west-2.outscale.com/uploads/2018/08/Sample-BioMEMS-Non-Invasive-Sensors-Microsystems-for-Life-Sciences-Healthcare-2018-.pdf As founder and CEO of Rogue Valley Microdevices, Jessica Gomez has created a world-class precision MEMS foundry and wafer fab in the heart of Southern Oregon. Integral to her role as CEO, Ms. Gomez practices a business philosophy of offering custom design, best-in-class process technology and R D expertise to customers, to help them achieve the highest quality and reliability in their products.In 2018, Ms. Gomez was selected for the prestigious SEMI Board of Industry Leaders. SEMI also recognized her in its first Spotlight on SEMI Women, which honors accomplished women in the global microelectronics industry.Prior to founding Rogue Valley Microdevices in 2003, Ms. Gomez honed her experience in semiconductor processing and production management through positions at Standard Microsystems Corporation, Integrated Micromachines and Xponent Photonics.For more information, visit: https://roguevalleymicrodevices.com/Rogue Valley Microdevices is a longtime member and supporter of SEMI-MEMS Sensors Industry Group, which connects the MEMS and sensors supply network, allowing members to address common industry challenges and explore new markets.

According to market research and strategy consulting firm Yole Développement (Yole), the total market size of MEMS, sensors and actuators will double from $48 billion in 2018 to $93 billion in 2024.[i] The consumer market will continue to drive volume, with applications such as smartphones making up for in volume what they lack in average selling price (ASP). Stronger demand in automotive, biomedical/health, industrial, and voice-first applications (such as smart speakers) will support this upward trajectory. With so much growth ahead of us, how will the design and manufacture of MEMS keep pace with industry demand for higher levels of innovation and integration, lower cost and lower power, smaller footprints, and faster design cycles — all while meeting acceptable price points?We turned to a handful of MEMS manufacturing experts from SEMI-MSIG who will join us at SEMICON West 2019, July 9-11 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, to explore the complexities of keeping pace with market demand for MEMS over the next decade.Address the Design GapMentor GM, ICDS Division Greg Lebsack and SoftMEMS President Mary Ann Maher see tremendous progress in the manufacturing supply chain for MEMS. At the same time, they acknowledge the significant gap that still exists in design capability for creating the billions of interconnected sensors required for future applications. Greg and Mary Ann will dive into the standards, ecosystem requirements and collaborative design solutions that will allow the micro-sensors industry to meet demand for next-generation wearables, Internet of Things (IoT) products and medical devices.Get Collaborative with Greg and Mary Ann: Addressing the Design Gap to Enable Next Generation Sensor-Based Products, SEMICON West, TechTALKS South, Thursday, July 11, 2019, 10:35-11:00 a.m. Register today.Get to a Really Big NumberFrom thousands of sensors and actuators in a single airplane to hundreds in a single car or a piece of factory equipment to the twenty-plus that ship in each of the hundreds of millions of the world’s smartphones, we aren’t even close to reaching the saturation point for these intelligent devices. SPTS Technologies EVP GM David Butler isn’t living on the Spaceship Enterprise (or the Millenium Falcon, come to think of it) when he says that we are going to get to a trillion sensors. It is going to happen. The questions are: how and when?Connect with David: Enabling the Age of a Trillion Sensors, SEMICON West, TechTALKS South, Thursday, July 11, 2019, 11:00-11:25 a.m. Register today.Shift to Automotive-GradeDemand for optical sensing technologies such as LIDAR is shifting sensor manufacturing requirements from consumer- to automotive-grade, with its enhanced lifetimes, temperature cycling and higher performance specifications. To meet demand, manufacturers are turning to wafer-level processing, since it complies with the hermetic sealing and dew-point control required for the more rigorous automotive-grade applications. EV Group Business Development Director Thomas Uhrmann, Ph.D., will provide an overview of the steps for manufacturing optical elements, including integration with CMOS circuitry, as he offers a window into the future of automotive packaging for sensors.Tune in with Thomas: Future Manufacturing Requirements for Automotive and Photonics Sensing, SEMICON West, TechTALKS South, Thursday, July 11, 2019, 11:25-11:50 a.m. Register today. Measure Twice, Cut OnceFaster time-to-market, improved device yield, and greater productivity in high-volume manufacturing are increasingly critical requirements for MEMS manufacturers. When a single manufacturing error can cost hundreds of thousands if not a million or more dollars — as well as months of development time — designers can save both time and cost by employing an integrated approach to MEMS design. Lam Research Sr. Director of Strategic Marketing David Haynes will explain how simulation, verification and process modeling can address MEMS-specific engineering challenges such as multi-physics interactions, process variations, MEMS + IC integration, and MEMS + package interaction. Using the right tools before committing to actual fabrication can make or break a project.Get Conceptual (and Practical) with David: Enabling Better MEMS from Concept to High-Volume Production, SEMICON West, TechTALKS South, Thursday, July 11, 2019, 11:50 a.m.-12:15 p.m. Register today.Navigate a Dynamic Foundry LandscapeWe’re still living in a one product-one process world when it comes to MEMS manufacturing. This makes bringing a new device to market both time-consuming and expensive. These challenges aside, the functional capabilities of MEMS, combined with small-footprint and low-power options, have made MEMS increasingly popular. How are market dynamics in MEMS manufacturing evolving to accommodate both demand for high-volume, lower-cost products such as MEMS microphones as well as high-value, lower-volume products such as biomedical devices, IoT products and industrial sensors? Rogue Valley Microdevices Founder CEO Jessica Gomez will explain how foundry consolidation through acquisition, collaboration with other ecosystem players, and specialization in vertical markets such as biomedical or optical are some of the approaches that are transforming the MEMS foundry landscape.Join the Evolution with Jessica: Consolidation, Collaboration, Specialization: How Will MEMS Fabs Manage Changing Dynamics, TechTALKS Stage South, Thursday, July 11, 2019, 12:15-12:40 p.m. Register today.i“Status of the MEMS Industry report,” Yole Développement (Yole), 2019 Edition.Maria Vetrano is a public relations consultant at SEMI.