MEMS' moment could be now in consumer

MUNICH, Germany — The market for microelectrical mechanical systems (MEMS) is "not for the faint of heart," but recent strides in manufacturing, testing and packaging could lead to robust growth in consumer applications, experts here said Tuesday (Nov. 14).

"There are issues of cost. Huge swings in demand and you have to deal with ramp-up issues. There are much simpler markets to go after," said Jeff Niew, vice president with Knowles Acoustic said. "But the rewards are there."

The consumer market appears to be the next big thing for MEMS, which generally has been next year's boom technology for some time. The percentage of MEMS devices going into consumer systems is expected to grow from 6 percent to 22 percent in the coming years, according to some estimates.

But manufacturing and test issues—and ultimately cost—have dogged acceptance of the devices.

"This market is not for the faint of heart," said Mack Lund, product manager for Analog Devices Inc.'s micromechanical products. "We need to drive those prices down. We see a large price elasticity in terms of demand. As we drive price down we drive the volumes up."

Hubert Geitner, MEMS marketing manager at ST Microelectronics, noted that the potential for systems improvement through the use of MEMS is catching on. MEMS devices such as accelerometers are picking up in cellphones, portable computers and gaming. In one application for instance, MEMS can be used to protect hard-disk drives from jarring, and in laptops to shut down a system in case of theft, Geitner said.

Wan-Thai Hsu, chief technologist at MEMS oscillator vendor Discera Inc. said his company's foray into the $3.5 billion quartz crystal market is driven not only by the ubiquity of silicon but by an attempt to lower overall systems costs.

"It can be packaged in conventional [quad flat no-lead] plastic with a lower cost," Hsu said. "We're looking at 15 percent cost reduction every year."

Frank Melzer, CEO of Bosch Sensortec, said the key is to driving down costs. "One thing is for sure, prices will go down and we will create more volume," Melzer said.

Startup companies are widely seen as driving MEMS technology as developers seek ways to penetrate the consumer market in RF MEMS applications like tire pressure sensors, cellphones and GPS receivers.

Among the new wave of companies is SiTime Corp., which began volume production of a MEMS resonator in November that is designed to challenge quartz crystal technology in the timing device market. "In two years we won't be talking about MEMS anymore. We'll be talking about timing chips," said Kurt Peterson, SiTime's co-founder and CEO.

But incremental steps like trying to replace quartz crystals with MEMS devices haven't convinced some industry observers that the technology is ready to take off. Marker research InStat is predicting MEMS switches will begin to show up in mainstream consumer devices like cellphones by next year. Others say it will take longer.

The key question is "when MEMS will make it into cellphones," said Jeremie Bouchaud, an industry analyst with WTC Wicht Technologie Consulting, based here.

Bouchaud said the first major MEMS switch application could be reconfiguring multimode cellphones. But Bouchaud isn't as bullish as others about when MEMS will show up in mobile phones, predicting 2008 at the earliest.