Challenges of the emerging microsystems industry

Abstract

The microsystems industry is now a rapid growing industrial sector that has emerged during the three last decades. The onset was mainly a technological spin-off from microelectronics/integrated circuit technology. Silicon micromachining gave the main triggering technology push as a very promising process technology with distinctive features. Sensor applications gave the first market opportunities, and batch-organised processing technology adapted from the microelectronics industry the key to high quality at low cost. Today, this has matured into a separate industry sector with their own market and manufacturing infrastructure, also with a limited use of other materials than silicon. The microsystems are used in electronic systems with widespread applications, ranging from low cost, high volume automotive applications to high cost, low volume instrumentation applications. Key technological success and inhibitor factors for this industry are discussed. It is proposed that the most important are market opportunities, microelectronics manufacturing infrastructure and micromachining. In the future, computer-aided design and simulation tools will also gain importance. Examples from research and manufacturing of microsystems, mainly from SensoNor and SINTEF Microsystems in Norway, are used to illustrate these factors. It is proposed that the most important challenge for SensoNor is the transition from being sensor company to becoming a true microsystem company.