Silicon on insulator (SOI) substrates are the starting point for fabricating many sensors. One company offering a portfolio of advanced engineered substrates presents an interesting design alternative to customers. IceMOS Technology Ltd of Belfast Northern Ireland has a very attractive alternative to unprocessed starting wafers. Outsourced engineered substrates enable a company to expand their MEMS sensor offering easily without making an investment into engineering or equipment resources.
For example, their Cavity Bonded SOI (CSOI) substrates are the starting wafer for pressure, inertial, and LiDAR sensors, in addition to other MEMS devices such as microphones, speakers, microfluidics, and resonators. In this area, the company has a long history, extensive expertise and an impressive intellectual property portfolio with over 100 patents granted, pending or filed.
The Cavity Bonded SOI is just one of the IceMOS advanced substrates. In addition to the basic SOI wafer and CSOI, others include SiSI, DSP, DSOI and even TSOI wafers with high voltage isolation.
Hugh Griffin, VP of Global Sales and Marketing for IceMOS says, “We work with a number of MEMS customers and foundries that are producing a wide range of devices, the majority of which are some type of sensor.”
However, IceMOS offers more than just supplying customized SOI wafers.
“We help our customers make more efficient use of their engineering resources, better manage their MEMS fab capacity loading and cycle times, and, in many cases, reduce new product development and introduction time,” he explains.
These customer-specific fully-customized starting substrates with MEMS features are ready to go directly into the customer’s wafer fab line when they arrive. This approach eliminates upfront processing steps in their fab.