Successful Commercialisation and Release of the Analog Devices RF MEMS Switch

Ray Goggin of Analog Devices will share the story of how, with constant focus on reliability, Analog Devices has successfully commercialized an electrostatic MEMS switch in industry standard plastic packaging. Ray has held a number of roles in Test, Design, Marketing and Management in the Precision Products Group at Analog Devices. More recently, he has been the champion and leader of ADI’s MEMS switch technology and ADGM1304 product development, overseeing this innovative breakthrough product’s successful commercialization and release. 

The prospect of a highly reliable wide bandwidth compact MEMS switch being used in RF test instrumentation and other applications  has been attractive for many years, and the road is littered with companies both large and small who have tried and failed to commercialize this illusive technology. Reliability and ease of use have been long standing challenges with the widespread adoption of MEMS switches and Analog Devices MEMS switch technology development in Ireland has concentrated on comprehensively addressing these issues.

Ray will share some of the important lessons learnt on this long journey to success and also discuss both the application level impact that MEMS switches are having on Analog’s customers as well as the apprehension they had in adopting the technology. Finally the talk will show how in the future MEMS switches will be seen as game changing technology in multiple market segments.

Soft Piezoelectric MEMS Technologies for Sensing and Energy Harvesting 

Prof. Massimo De Vittorio is director of the Center for Biomolecular Nanotechnologies (CBN) of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT). His research activity deals with the development of science and technology applied to nanophotonics, nanoelectronics and nano and micro electromechanical systems (NEMS/MEMS). He is also senior editor of the Journal IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology and founder of several start-up companies spun-off from his research activities.

At MME, Prof. Vittorio will discuss the use of soft piezoelectric technologies in next generation remote sensors, wearable and implantable electronics, and the internet of things (IoT) and of medical things (IoMT). These applications require advanced material and device properties including ultrahigh sensitivity, low power consumption and biocompatibility. It will be shown that thin film piezoelectrics on flexible polymers can be synthesized and processed to produce compact, high-sensitive arrays of pressure sensors, mimicking the functions of human skin, and can also be at the same time exploited to harvest mechanical energy. By virtue of their intrinsic softness and flexibility this technology can scavenge energy non-resonantly at very low frequencies, opening interesting opportunities for retrieving energy from motion, heartbeat, blood pressure or breath. It will be also shown that small piezoelectric flags can efficiently act as harvesters of energy at extremely low wind or water flow speed in outdoor environments.

"Publish or Perish”: A Guide for Writing Scientific Papers in Natural Sciences

Prof. Per Ohlckers is with the Department of Micro- and Nano Systems Technology at University College of Southeast Norway (HSN), Horten, Norway and is also Professor Emeritus at Department of Physics, University of Oslo. Prof. Ohlckers has contributed to the development of several successful commercial products and more than 150 international scientific publications with a focus on silicon sensor technology and micro- & nanotechnologies, including two patents. He ha a strong track record in technology commerciliisation, and is a former Chairman of MME (1998 and 2011).

Prof. Ohlckers will discuss scientific writing in natural science.The quality of the content of the scientific writing is such that your documented research work can be repeated as completely as needed for validation, by following your descriptions of the work performed. This is an important inherent quality assurance scheme of natural science to assure that the achieved results are correct and can be used as an input to further expand the research frontiers. In addition, such peer review is used to evaluate the research originality compared to other published research work. Scientific writing is about documenting the research performed in this way. The contents of the different typical chapters of a scientific paper in natural sciences are outlined here with general guidelines and subjective recommendations. A suitable format is given as a template with guidelines for the structure and look: “The Gold Standard” (or IMRAD –Introduction, Methods And Discussions) The presentation uses a well-structured and widely-used electronic file template from the IEEE as an example.  

Applications and Technology of Piezo Driven Micropumps 

Prof. Martin Richter´s mission is to enable microdosing systems for industrial applications. He completed his studies in technical physics at the Technical University of Munich, and gained his PhD at the University of Armed Forces in the area of microfluidics. Since 2000 he has been heading the Department Micromechanics, Actuators and Fluidics at Fraunhofer. His scientific focus is on microfluidic actuators such as micro pumps, micro valves, open jet dispensers or micro blenders, and integrating these in microfluidic systems. Such microfluidic actuators are deployed in varied applications, e.g. in medical technology (such as drug dosage, glaucoma therapy), laboratory technology or dosage of lubricants.

This talk will show how piezo driven micropumps are the key component of microdosing systems, which enable new applications in consumer, medical, industry, automotive, chemistry and lab technology. They can be realized and manufactured by various materials, such as plastics, metal or silicon. Plastic micropumps can address cost efficient applications, metal micropumps mainly addresses high flow applications, and silicon micropumps can achieve high performance applications at a very small device size. As the manufacturing cost of silicon micropumps at mass production scales linear with chip size, state of the art chip sizes of 7x7 mm2 prevent the use of micropumps in medical disposable applications, as well as in consumer electronic devices. One important step for silicon micropumps is to miniaturize the chip size to reduce manufacturing cost. The reduction of the chip size to 5x5 mm2, including strategies to realize mass production of silicon micropumps, will be explained in this presentation. A pilot application of a 5x5 mm2 micropump in a mobile phone will be demonstrated.