Project MEMS - January 2009 - (Page 3) viewpoint deSign for failure I was recently speaking with Roger Grace, founder and president of Roger Grace Associates, a company that provides strategic marketing services to advanced technology companies. Roger, who has been involved with MEMs technology practically since its inception, was saying that one of the major barriers to successful commercialization of MEMS technology is Project By richard comerford | rcomerford@hearst.com Contents Viewpoint MeMS essentially bad engineering (my words, not his). What Roger has seen is that, ironically, many companies aren’t taking a system-design approach to micro-electromechanical systems. They tend to focus initially only on the MEMS device itself, ignoring other issues that are equally if not more important to getting the device to market. For example, companies sometimes wait to think about how to package the device until it is being built, and therefore fail to take into account packaging’s effect on device performance. Or they fail to consider how their product’s users will connect it to other devices, or how devices coming off the line will be tested to ensure manufacturing performance and device quality. Having spent the latter half of the 20th century covering the electronics industry, I can remember hearing the same sorts of complaints about IC designers. Because it came to grips with these issues, the IC industry became the driving force behind commerce today. In this and future issues, we will try to help you overcome the MEMS design pitfalls that can be detrimental to success. For example, this month’s cover article deals with what practical things can be done today to test MEMS devices, so MEMS designs can accordingly design for test. We hope that by helping you with these issues, we can contribute to realizing what we foresee as exciting possibilities for new and fundamentally different products. Solutions for Testing MEMS Devices on the Wafer Level Wireless Sensor Networks Have Arrived Choosing the Right Material for RF Packaging Home Page Product Training Module Online Ordering Suppliers Catalog 3 | P r o j E C T M E M S | vo L . 1 / N o . 1 http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;210306059;32013581;o?http://www.digikey.com/ http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;210306059;32013581;o?http://www.digikey.com/ http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;210306136;32013581;k?http://digikey.com/PTM/PTMMaster.page?site=us&lang=en http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;210306155;32013581;l?http://ordering.digikey.com/ordering/addpart.aspx?site=US&source=search http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;210306414;32013581;j?http://digikey.com/Suppliers/SupplierIndex.page?site=us&lang=en http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;210306629;32013581;r?http://dkc1.digikey.com/us/en/pdf/Current.html
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