MEMSIC, Inc., a developer of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)-based sensors, has announced the shipment of its 1 billionth MEMS sensor. MEMSIC’s products, ranging from accelerometers to sophisticated inertial guidance systems, are used in a wide variety of applications including automotive safety systems, avionics for manned and unmanned aircraft, industrial controls, and consumer electronics.
MEMSIC’s patented thermal MEMS technology has enabled the industry’s first and only monolithic accelerometers, where both the MEMS sensor and the signal processing circuitry are implemented together on the same CMOS die.
There are a number of benefits of this technology that have enabled tremendous commercial success across a number of different markets and applications. For example, the MEMSIC technology has no moving parts or resonance error, providing excellent vibration and shock tolerance (up to 200,000g) and reliability. This is critical for challenging environments such as automotive, construction equipment, UAVs, and other applications where high performance and ruggedness are critical.
Combining state-of-the-art wafer bonding and wafer level packaging, MEMSIC has developed the first and only monolithic, wafer-level packaged three-axis MEMS accelerometer, lowering costs by approximately 60%, and reducing solution size by 50%. Leading adopters include an array of mobile consumer devices such as smartphones, tablets, toys, and wearable devices.
Another leading technology in MEMSIC’s portfolio is AMR magnetic sensor technology. MEMSIC’s portfolio of magnetic sensors integrates a three-axis AMR magnetic sensor plus signal-processing circuitry, all in an extremely small form factor as small as 1.2×1.2×0.5mm. MEMSIC’s breakthrough AMR technology has widened the full scale range to ± 30 Gauss, while nearly eliminating issues with noise, and enabling 1º precision for electronic compasses. One of the unique differentiators of MEMSIC’s technology is its tolerance to very high interfering fields, virtually eliminating the requirement for “figure 8” user calibration. MEMSIC has received Frost & Sullivan’s Technology Innovation Award for their AMR technology.
