The Workshop provides a window into future commercial products. For example, earlier conferences featured many papers on MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes and those products rose to market dominance soon after.
At recent conferences, there’s been an unsettling trend for those of us in the silicon business – a decreasing number of papers on silicon technology. This year, only 53% of oral presentations featured silicon based devices – a device incorporating silicon, whether as a passive substrate or an active material.
Looking at oral presentation topics over the past 12 years, it’s clear the tide of academic research on microdevices is ebbing away from silicon (see graph).
Instead, academic researchers are now focusing on developing polymer and paper based technology. Devices fabricated from these materials can be made in non clean environments and at low cost using simple equipment. They’re a better fit for shrinking research budgets than silicon. Many of these innovations are aimed towards medical applications, where biocompatible and flexible materials are essential.
Paper and plastic microdevices are still relatively primitive in function and capability, and the manufacturing infrastructure for this type of device doesn’t yet exist. It could take more than 10 years for these new technologies to mature and reach commercial markets.
For those in industry who have been counting on academia to invent exciting new silicon MEMS for their products of tomorrow, here’s the bad news: academic researchers are abandoning silicon.
But there is plenty more innovating to do on silicon, which means that industry will have to pick up the R&D slack or risk stagnation.
Author profile:
Alissa Fitzgerald is founder of MEMS engineering consultancy AM Fitzgerald and Associates
