Leveraging Semiconductor Ecosystems to MEMS

Taiwan, with population of near 23 million and area of 36000km², is active in the semiconductor related industries and researches, especially in Hsinchu city where the National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) is located. The faculties and students of NTHU have the opportunity to frequently and closely interact with the semiconductor industries. This article would like to share the experience of NTHU MEMS group regarding how they leverage the huge semiconductor resources to promote MEMS technologies in the following four stages. First, employing the CMOS-MEMS technologies serves as the bridge to communicate with the semiconductor industries. Second, by preventing various mechanical issues from thin films, promising applications for CMOS-MEMS technologies are demonstrated. Third, the MEMS above CMOS technology established in the foundry further exhibits the win-win collaboration for MEMS and semiconductor technologies. Finally, due to the potential applications in Smart-X and Metaverse, semiconductor industries are even developing processes with new functional materials for MEMS recently. In conclusions, it is a win-win strategy between academia/research and industry/market to leverage the resources in mature semiconductor ecosystems for the development and commercialization of MEMS.