MEMS in the coming decade

The volume of MEMS devices shipped per year has increased by an order of magnitude in each of the past 4 decades. Earlier this year, Robert Bosch celebrated shipping a total of 1B MEMS devices (since about 1995), mostly in the automotive space. This year, Knowles Acoustics has also celebrated shipping a total of 1B microphones (since about 2003). What can we expect in the coming decade? Now that MEMS is convincingly penetrating the rapidly growing and evolving consumer electronics market, we can expect remarkable changes in MEMS technology. While smaller volume applications will continue to use older 150mm manufacturing facilities, the accelerating trend to build MEMS on 200mm wafers will increase. This will mean that traditional CMOS foundries will garner an increasing share of MEMS manufacturing. In addition, there is developing a trend to integrate multiple sensor functions on the same MEMS chip, or inside the same MEMS package. MEMS has barely scratched the surface of new application areas in RF and in biotech — these areas will grow dramatically in the next few years. As MEMS sensors and other devices continue to proliferate into every conceivable consumer product, many new opportunities for new MEMS products and new MEMS companies will open over the coming decade.