NSF Award
1447397
The broader impact/commercial potential of this project can lead to a revolution in the consumer<br/>electronics market (mobile handsets, tablets, game consoles and wearables), wherein high performance,<br/>low power, small footprint multisensing (not limited to inertial sensing) platforms with timing devices,<br/>are all directly microfabricated on a common ASIC substrate. Sensor fusion can produce unprecedented<br/>user experiences by using data collected from all sensors and processed using machine learning<br/>algorithms. This can further boost the sensor and timing markets that are expected to exceed $6 billion<br/>dollars by 2017. Moreover, the emergent Internet of Things (IoTs) and wearable markets are expected to<br/>reach $20 billion dollars by 2025, which can induce a rapid growth of such intelligent sensor fusion<br/>market. This can have a tremendous societal impact as wearable devices and IoT systems, interfaced with<br/>mobile platforms, can be used to monitor people?s health, safety and energy consumption. Making these<br/>solutions affordable will make it amenable to low income households not only in the US but also around<br/>the world. It will also enable researchers to attain new frontiers of knowledge such as in digital sensory<br/>systems. The long-term goals are to provide such intelligent sensor fusion solutions.<br/><br/>This Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to demonstrate wafer-scale<br/>microfabrication of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) inertial sensors directly on the<br/>application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) substrates, by using electroplated copper (e-Cu) as a<br/>structural material. MEMS inertial sensors, such as gyroscopes and accelerometers, are pervasively used<br/>in consumer electronics and automotive industries. Current trends are, however, requiring higher device<br/>performance with smaller footprints, wherein multi-degree-of-freedom sensors are integrated on the same<br/>package, to enable new capabilities and user experiences. These requirements can be met by<br/>monolithically fabricating inertial sensors on ASIC substrates, which is complex to achieve with silicon<br/>as a structural material. Using e-Cu, which is currently used for ASIC metal interconnects, as the<br/>structural material, can enable easier routing to implement optimized mechanical structures, smaller<br/>dimensions given the high density of copper, extremely low cost as no wafer bonding is required, smaller<br/>form factors, multiple sensors on a single die, and much smaller parasitics providing low noise and higher<br/>performance. Phase I tasks will be to wafer-scale fabricate and characterize e-Cu gyroscopes and<br/>accelerometers with optimal performance parameters and address any drift problems that could emanate<br/>from structural reliability issues associated with the MEMS elements.
