MEMS for Tilt Measurement and Headlight Leveling

High-intensity discharge (HID) headlights improve the safety of night driving by projecting light further down the road and increasing the time available for reaction to problems. Typical HID systems project up to 3,500 lumens, while older halogen systems produce a maximum of 2,100 lumens.

Although HID headlights improve the safety of night driving for users, they can cause glare and can (briefly) blind the driver of an oncoming vehicle on any two-lane road. This makes it more difficult for approaching drivers to identify pedestrians and other road hazards. For example, four percent of respondents to a survey cited glare as contributing to their accident; the problem can often be worse for older people or anyone with a vision impairment. More info...

iPhone, Palm Pre, BlackBerry Boost Popularity of Accelerometer Technology

Expect accelerometers to be in one-third of mobile phones by 2010 and to reach sales of $1.6 billion in 2013, says iSuppli. The popularity of this screen-orienting feature has been encouraged by the Apple iPhone, Palm Pre and BlackBerry Storm, to name just a few of the devices they're now inside. More info ...

Energy harvesting at Holst Research Centre

Vibrational energy harvesting

Both piezoelectric and electrostatic energy harvesters are developed using micromachining with complete MEMS microgenerators a focus and at least 100 microwatts/cm2 an objective. Both PZT and AlN materials are used and two concepts of electrostatic generator are being explored. Electrostatic, otherwise known as capacitive harvesting becomes attractive at micro scale where the most attractive bulk forms of harvesting - photovoltaics and electrodynamics, cease to be scalable. Already a world record for power output has been achieved. More info...

Smart Material Systems and MEMS: Design and Development Methodologies

Presenting unified coverage of the design and modeling of smart micro- and macrosystems, this book addresses fabrication issues and outlines the challenges faced by enginee working with smart senso in a variety of applications.Part I deals with the fundamental concepts of a typical smart system and its constituent components. Preliminary fabrication and characterization concepts are introduced before design principles are discussed in detail. Part III presents a comprehensive account of the modeling of smart systems, smart senso and actuato. Part IV builds upon the fundamental concepts to analyze fabrication techniques for silicon-based MEMS in more detail.Practicing enginee will benefit from the detailed assessment of applications in communications technology, aerospace, biomedical and mechanical engineering. The book provides an essential reference or textbook for graduates following a coue in smart senso, actuato and systems.

Download link : http://yourfileplace.com/files/532852/0470093617.rar.html

Cost a Major Challenge for Advanced Packaging Solutions

To many in the semiconductor industry, the importance of packaging, assembly and test is becoming increasingly obvious. Over the past several years, IDMs have seen the price of silicon fabrication fall, while the cost of packaging, assembly and test has steadily been on the rise. As much attention as is paid to cost savings realized through improvements in front-end manufacturing, today there is likely just as much to be gained in looking for improvements in final manufacturing. More info ...

MEMS-Based Switch Features Remote Control

Allowing the user to access two separate devices via connection through the common port with manual pushbutton or RS232 remote serial control, the MEMS-based M6288 fiber-optic mirror A/B switch from Electro Standards Laboratories features duplex multimode ST ports with a fiber size of 62.5/125 micron. The 1300-nm mirror switch supports a gigabyte data rate. Power-loss protection permits the M6288 to default to the A position and continue to pass data. More info...

Reportlinker Adds Global and China MEMS Industry Report, 2008-2009

MEMS, abbreviated for Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, is a semiconductor technology integrating mechanics and electronics, which got widely applied for auto airbag preliminarily, and then for all the other auto industries via MEMS sensor. With the further development of MEMS technology, as well as the characteristics of application terminals such as lightness, thinness, shortness and smallness, the demand for small MEMS products with high performance shoots up, and the fields like consumer electronics and medical care also increasingly require large quantity MEMS products. More info...

New Packaging Dimensions, Frontiers

No longer confined to the "back end" of manufacturing, packaging technologies are very much at the fore of industry thinking as industry technologists look to address the challenges of increasingly complex devices. ICs at 22 nm design rules, 3-D designs, MEMS devices, and emerging technologies such as biomedical applications are among the key drivers shaping advanced packaging technologies, and are part of the technology showcase at SEMICON West 2009. More info...