“MEMS are going beyond mobiles, and spreading to the human body and the environment around”

Fabio Pasolini, General Manager, Motion MEMS Division, STMicroelectronics, discusses with Heena Jhingan developments in the micro-electro-mechanical systems market and how MEMS are finding usage into a growing number of appliances. Excerpts

How have the micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) evolved over the years?
In the past, MEMS have driven the evolution of user interface. Thanks to MEMS, it has been possible to implement intuitive user interfaces, controlled by motion. Today we see a trend where MEMS are going beyond the mobile phone and spreading to the human body and the environment around. MEMS are everywhere as components of mobile phones and game consoles. Similarly, we also have MEMS inside the computing devices, protecting them. In case a  device is dropped, the sensors are able to sense it and trigger the packing of the drive heads into the safe area such that data  on the disk is protected.

MEMS are also inside digital still cameras and here they are used to make an artificial horizon. Inside portable media players, MEMS can support applications that trigger change of song or music just with a shake of the device. MEMS are also being installed in washing machines. By measuring the vibrations of the machine, they can help in saving energy—as less vibration means long-lasting life and less energy consumption.

It is no more about user interface; now MEMS can help trigger the implementation of other applications. For example, in case of augmented reality, a technology that has the capability to add information on top of what we see through the camera lens. An emerging area of application of MEMS is fitness and wellness monitoring, enabling collection of data around amount of workout, calories burnt, etc. In the automotive field, they enable active and passive safety functions. MEMS are also being implemented for monitoring food and water quality.

MEMS have evolved not only in terms of use cases, the structure of MEMS has also seen a major shift. We now have multi-sensing capabilities integrated on the same chip, putting together a combination of accelerometer and gyroscope or accelerometer and magnetometer or all the three together. The biggest enabler of innovation is the availability of the software layer that fuses the data from multiple sensors into information that enables the developers to write the application without having to understand the physics of the sensor. The software makes the sensor intelligent to do some processing by itself.

You said that MEMS have undergone a change in terms of their structure becoming more compact. Has that impacted the sensor efficiency?
In comparison to the times when we started our business in 2004-05, the fitting used be about 98 cubic mm, but the shrink in the volume of the sensor has been about 25 times. On the energy consumption side, we have gone from 5-10 milliamps to 5-10 microamps, cutting the power usage by 1000 times. I believe we have been able to improve the performance of the sensor manifold.

How big do you think is the MEMS market and what are the new opportunities you see, especially in the India market?
According to iSuppli, STMicroelectronics was the top supplier in 2011 with a 30% share of the overall consumer and mobile MEMS market. Last year, we generated a revenue of about $900 mn from MEMS, out of which about $650 mn came from accelerometers and gyroscopes, which we call the motion MEMS, and about $200 mn was contributed by the foundry business. The total MEMS market is expected to grow at 10% till 2016. If we look specifically at the consumer market we see a 16% growth till 2016. It will be difficult to give the size of the market in India.

How is your acquisition of bTendo panning out?
We had acquired an Israel-based company called bTendo. We had undertaken a joint development initiative with the company with an aim to combine its Scanning Laser Projection engine with our MEMS expertise, video processing know-how and semiconductor process technology. The effort has produced evaluation samples ideally suited, because of their tiny size and low power consumption, for integration into next-generation smartphones, digital cameras and laptops. These samples are now in the hands of potential customers. The Scanning Laser Projection engine produces a focus-free high-resolution output that will allow users to display their video, pictures and presentations virtually anywhere.