Second Edition of International Micro-Nano Roadmap

Executive Summary

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Today we have commercial MEMS and Nano solutions that are increasingly expected to provide more value as they replace traditional commercial solutions. Whether it is Nanotubes based computers or MEMS devices that sense, think, act, communicate and/or navigate them are running into both technological nay-sayers and the resistance that is experienced by any product requiring end-user behavioral change. MEMS and Nano devices today are acting more and more to revolutionize the markets and industries in which they find applications. These technologies have passed through many of the steps and the time required of a technology base to emerge as an industrial base.

Structure of the International Micro-Nano Roadmap

The 1st Edition of the IMN Roadmap was organized in three sections with fifteen chapters. The 2nd Edition Roadmap has a further six new chapters and two updated chapters from the 1st Edition. The Cd-ROM version of the IMN Roadmap contains both 1st and 2nd Editions. The sections and chapters are structured as follows:

New Section Four

New 2nd Edition Chapters

1. New Introduction
2. RF MEMS
3. Nanotechnology
4. MEMS Patent Analysis
5. Process and Equipment for MST
6. Equipment and Tooling for MNT

Updated Chapters are:

7. Status and Future of Microsystems / MEMS Foundries
8. Packaging and Assembly

1st Edition Chapters Included:

Section One:

1. Introduction
2. Commercialization
3. Optical Microsystems
4. BioMEMS
5. Market Forecasting

Section Two:

6. IC Compatible Manufacturing
7. Non-IC Compatible Manufacturing
8. Simulation, Modeling and Design
9. Reliability, Testing and Metrology
10. Packaging & Assembly

Section Three:

11. Microsystems Foundry
12. Cost Models
13. Standards
14. Integration
15. Glossary

Major Findings

Our contributors have provided many salient conclusions throughout our chapters. Some of the roadmap information supports the current Micros and Nano technologies as the economic engine that could drive the next "big commercial opportunity". Others identify bottlenecks and roadblocks. The nature of a roadmap is that all chapters are interdependent and many of the major findings are voiced in differing ways across the body of the work. We provide new findings from our new and revised chapters in section 4.

1. There is a longer history than commonly thought of products based on Nano technology
2. There are exceptional ways to categorize nanotechnologies that make commercial success
3. We provide a timeline to atomically precise manufacture
4. Nano technology
5. RF MEMS is near commercial breakthrough on many arenas and we provide a timeline and a roadmap.
6. There is a rich and core patent history in Micro and Nano technologies that include "core" patents
7. There is an imitation of a standard MEMS tool set
8. The MEMS industry is in an era of fermentation and we have provided an analysis of the existing foundry base to

We specifically include highlight fifteen major conclusions our contributors have made in from our first roadmap effort:

1. Our contributors see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the Microsystems industry in excess of 20% through 2010. Estimates of a CAGR of less than 20% cited by numerous studies are conservative.
2. Differing technology manufacturing paradigms in Microsystems are becoming increasingly competitive with each other, rather than only complimentary.
3. Application spaces have started to self-select dominant front-end technology pathways.
4. The costs of firms switching front-end manufacturing is rising fast and will continue to do so.
5. The trend to add functionality to Microsystems devices is inducing the development of Microsystems-based products which Sense, Think, Act, Communicate, Self Power, and Navigate, or subsets thereof, to provide uniquely useful commercial solutions.
6. There is increasing potential competition between subsets of MEMS device types.
7. Microsystems will continue to grow in traditional markets, but the real fuel for a high CAGR lies in emerging markets, such as Micro fluidics, BioMEMS, RFMEMS, Micro-power, and Security-Defense.
8. Because there are very few existing Microsystems standards, over the next decade as applications mature, standardization across all phases of Microsystems manufacturing will be necessary for continued growth.
9. Basic efforts in reliability and understanding micro-scale failure mechanisms are imperative for continued growth over the next decade.
10. Packaging is emerging from a unique application-dependant process and accelerating toward more semi-custom efforts.
11. The trend in Microsystems foundries is fluxing with a dramatic increase in the number of foundries since 2000 as semiconductor foundries seek to use excess capacity by adding MST foundry work, but also indicating a shakeout in the number of foundries is also on the horizon.
12. There is a shift in BioMEMS from only actuators or sensors toward in- vitro and in-vivo devices that increasingly Sense, Think, Act, Self-power, Navigate, and Communicate.
13. A robust test process and functional test and reliability have historically gone hand in hand in MEMS-based device commercialization and the future appears to follow this trend.
14. More accurate and interdependent toolsets are emerging in MEMS design, modeling and simulation which are increasingly able to simulate yield and performance parameters on MEMS structures and systems.
15. Our glossary points to the fractional nature of Microsystems, but also serves as a starting point for a unified "dictionary" for the industry.

Chapters From Section Four

Second Edition Section 4 Chapter 2: RF MEMS

The RF industry is large and healthy, spanning a wide range not only of technologies and products, but a wide range of applications as well; including telecommunications, consumer devices, civilian radar and critical services, aerospace, and (largest of all) defense.   The range of products available is staggering, with a highly fragmented market and customer space, each offering or requiring products that vary wildly in cost, size, and performance.

The conventional semiconductor technologies dominate the industry because of their small size and generally low cost.  The large, expensive waveguide and ferrite-based products, by contrast, are used primarily for infrastructure, critical systems, and defense applications where high performance brings operational cost savings or safety returns.   RF MEMS, by contrast, appears to offer many of the performance advantages of high-end components, yet promises the small size and low cost enjoyed by semiconductor devices.  This chapter helps to guide the user in making an informed decision about whether to invest in the performance offered by RF MEMS or leverage the low cost of traditional technologies.

Second Edition Section 4 Chapter 3: Nanotechnology

The Nanotechnology chapter is designed to provide some structure to this rapidly emerging field.  Because of the meta-status of the term, nanotechnology is becoming an all-encompassing field.   In reality, it is an enabling technology that provides a strong foundation to many industries or markets rather than a stand-alone industry of its own.   Nanotechnology is new and attracting attention, a darling of Wall Street.  The current overarching use of the term has created a two-fold problem for those who collect data on nanotechnology and its uses.   The first challenge is the "problem of plenty".  There is currently a plethora of data easily retrieved by the simplest data search engines (there will likely be well over 3 million hits on any search engine you choose by the time you read this document).

The second challenge is the "problem of time".  The term Nanotechnology or Nano was simply not used by the early Nano systems firms.  In this document we have developed a roadmap based on a clean dataset that makes a clearly defined objective decision to address the true enabling and emerging nanotechnology.

Second Edition Section 4 Chapter 4: MEMS Patent Analysis

In response to previous roadmap users that expressed a desire to have a deeper knowledge of MEMS based patents and patent strategies, we investigate historical activity and current trends in the MEMS field. What to patent, when to patent, how to patent, and where to patent are questions that often have no clear answer or have no well defined, optimal approach. For those wishing to explore protection of their IP with patents, a discussion of concepts and considerations in the development and management of intellectual property follows to address these questions.

Second Edition Section 4 Chapter 5: Process and Equipment for MST

MEMS/MST manufacturing uses a diversity of tools and processes. To help the industry make informed decisions about tool purchases and process definitions, this chapter reduces the diverse field to 10 standard processes by which a majority of bulk and surface micromachining devices can be made. The toolset needed for that is relative limited in number. It is a mix of general thin film equipment like CVD equipment, lithography tools etc. and specific MST/MEMS equipment like Deep Reactive Ion Etchers and backside aligners. The figures below associate differing process with MEMS based product typologies and an example of a process stream.

Process stream 1

This process stream enables the manufacture of many types of devices with different functionality. All related devices contain patterned silicon nitride layers, membranes, or bridges, and wet anisotropically etched (KOH) cavities. Metal deposits on the front and or backside are another option. The equipment for this stream is from the basic set of equipment, as displayed in Appendix B. Some devices in this process stream are well known and still commercially interesting.

Key Equipment: LPCVD and PECVD nitride, KOH, metal deposition and etching, RIE

Products:

• Thermal Conductivity Device (TCD)
• Thermal gas flowsensor
• Thermal fluid flowsensor
• Thin membranes for TEM equipment
• Micro fluidic sieves and other perforated thin membranes
• V-groove glass fiber connector
• Micro needles for medical applications

Second Edition Section 4 Chapter 6: Equipment and Tooling for MNT

The emerging markets for MST/MEMS (Micro Systems Technologies / Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) products created a demand for specialized equipment. The first to fulfill that demand were suppliers of tools including Deep Reactive Ion Etchers (DRIE), waferbonders and backside aligners. Dedicated MST/MEMS suppliers are still in the forefront of this market. Spin-offs from universities were started to fulfill (niche) demands, whilst established companies entered this arena at a later stage, offering adapted processing tools developed for other industries, such as those specializing in thin film processing. More interestingly, even the (large) semiconductor equipment manufacturers have begun to show an interest. Within this context, there is now available a mixture of general equipment facilities, designed and developed for other applications such as semiconductors and also equipment adapted or specially tailored for Micro-Nano Technologies (MNT) production.

This chapter categorizes the equipment market into the following, general, areas:

• Front end equipment
• Back end equipment
• Nanotechnology equipment
• Test and measurement equipment

Second Edition Section 4 Chapter 7: Status and Future of Microsystems / MEMS Foundries

This chapter provides management of Microsystems foundries as well as their users assistance in their decision making process. We aim to assist designers in finding appropriate "Fabs" early in their device development phase, help foundries understand the direction of technology, and provide trends in fab construction and conversion. For example, it is comparatively easy for the MEMS designers to find prototypical foundry services. But, there remain prerequisites to finding a reliable path from product concept to commercializable volume.

The contributors to this chapter recognize that the cost involved in changing fabs or processes (see MEMS/MST Cost Modeling chapter), in both time and money, is enormous. A barrier for MEMS manufacturing is the difficulty of creating and maintaining cost-effective fabrication facilities for low volumes that can facilitate also high volumes. Another barrier is time needed to transform university developed processes into industrial ones. The drive to design for performance instead of design for manufacturability is helping to get customers interested, but is also delaying industrialization.

There are 5 categories of foundries:

1. University originated, mostly research oriented and/or SME
2. Smaller semiconductor companies offering MST service for balancing the capacity
3. Larger semiconductor companies offering MST to protect the customer base
4. Smaller non-semiconductor companies offering MST service for balancing the capacity
5. Pure foundries

In particular it is categories 2 and 3, semiconductor companies, which are growing in number.

Second Edition Section 4 Chapter 8: Packaging and Assembly

There are many references by MEMS experts as to the high percentage of the product cost attributed to the "Back end" (i.e., package and test). This percentage has been cited as high as 70% of the total cost. Packaging has not until recently received the research and development attention it deserves as a key enabler for microsystems commercialization. Packaging has often been referred to as the "Achilles Heel of MEMS Manufacturing" and a key "Bottleneck" in the process of MEMS commercialization.

A significant amount of attention is now being directed at packaging concerns. Packaging was an afterthought for most MEMS designers and manufacturers only a few years ago. Now it is part of the initial design process as mentioned by many notables such as Dr. Steven Senturia (see the Design, Simulation, and Modeling chapter for further insight). It is this second question that will dominate packaging and assembly over the next 5 years in order to make the majority of MEMS devices cost-effective and more ubiquitous in the marketplace. Therefore, a chapter in this MST Roadmap has been dedicated to the challenges of packaging.

Assembly of MEMS devices utilizes many engineering and design tools and supporting infrastructure for microsystems. There is a trend for MEMS specific packaging and assembly tools from EVG, Karl Suss, MA3 Solutions and many others, although Cost of Ownership in relation to the often relative small production volumes can be a problem. But, to date, many MEMS devices are developed using equipment not specifically MEMS-oriented, but more likely standard semiconductor industry equipment that has been modified somewhat.

This chapter focuses on the recent developments in MEMS packaging, as well as discusses the future of this sub-industry. One of the more promising approaches to MEMS packaging appears to be the "Supply Chain Method" and this process is discussed.

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