NSF Award
1632268
The broader impact/commercial potential of this project can lead to a revolution in the consumer electronics market<br/>(mobile handsets, tablets, game consoles and wearables), wherein high performance, low power, small footprint<br/>multisensing (not limited to inertial sensing) platforms with timing devices, are all directly microfabricated on a common<br/>ASIC substrate. Sensor fusion can produce unprecedented user experiences by using data collected from all sensors and<br/>processed using machine learning algorithms. This can further boost the sensor and timing markets that are expected to<br/>exceed $6 billion 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 market. This can have<br/>a tremendous societal impact as wearable devices and IoT systems, interfaced with mobile platforms, can be used to<br/>monitor people?s health, safety and energy consumption. Making these solutions affordable will make it amenable to low<br/>income households not only in the US but also around the world. It will also enable researchers to attain new frontiers of<br/>knowledge such as in digital sensory systems. The long-term goals are to provide such intelligent sensor fusion solutions.<br/><br/>This Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase 2 project seeks to demonstrate wafer-scale microfabrication of<br/>Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) inertial sensors directly on the application specific integrated circuit (ASIC)<br/>substrates, by using electroplated copper (e-Cu) as a structural material. MEMS inertial sensors, such as gyroscopes and<br/>accelerometers, are pervasively used in consumer electronics and automotive industries. Current trends are, however,<br/>requiring higher device performance with smaller footprints, wherein multi-degree-of-freedom sensors are integrated on<br/>the same package, to enable new capabilities and user experiences. These requirements can be met by monolithically<br/>fabricating inertial sensors on ASIC substrates, which is complex to achieve with silicon as a structural material. Using e-<br/>Cu, which is currently used for ASIC metal interconnects, as the structural material, can enable easier routing to<br/>implement optimized mechanical structures, smaller dimensions given the high density of copper, extremely low cost as<br/>no wafer bonding is required, smaller form factors, multiple sensors on a single die, and much smaller parasitics providing<br/>low noise and higher performance. Phase II tasks will be to wafer-scale fabricate an inertial measurement unit that is<br/>monolithically integrated with its ASIC with optimal performance parameters.
