New Paradigms for MEMS & NEMS Integration
(M&M´S)
Start date: Nov 1, 2011,
End date: Oct 31, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
Micro- and nanoelectromechanical system (MEMS and NEMS) components are vital for many industrial and consumer products such as airbag systems in cars and motion controls in mobile phones, and many of these MEMS and NEMS enabled applications have a large impact on European industry and society. However, the potential of MEMS and NEMS is being critically hampered by their dependence on integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing technologies. Most micro- and nano-manufacturing methods have been developed by the IC industry and are characterized by highly standardized manufacturing processes that are adapted for extremely large production volumes of more than 10.000 wafers per month. In contrast, the vast majority of MEMS and NEMS applications only demands production volumes of less than 100 wafers per month in combination with different non-standardized manufacturing and integration processes for each product. If a much wider variety of diverse and even low-volume MEMS and NEMS products shall be exploited, the semiconductor manufacturing paradigm has to be broken. In this project, we therefore will focus on frontier research on new paradigms for flexible and cost-efficient manufacturing and integration of MEMS and NEMS within three related research areas:(1) Wafer-Level Heterogeneous Integration for MEMS and NEMS, where we explore new and improved wafer-level heterogeneous integration technologies for MEMS and NEMS devices;(2) Integration of Materials into MEMS Using High-Speed Wire Bonding Tools, where we explore new ways of integrating various types of wire materials into MEMS devices;(3) Free-Form 3D Printing of Mono-Crystalline Silicon Micro- and Nanostructures, where we explore entirely novel ways of implementing mono-crystalline silicon MEMS and NEMS structures that can be arbitrarily shaped.
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