Standard MEMS sensor technologies for harsh environment

4 Concrete examples of sensors improvements 3 Products development for harsh environment
Harsh environment requirements have initially been f ul fi ll ed Few con c rete examples will be discussed hereatler to illus tr ate the harsh e nvironment cap abil ity of standard Colibrys
mechanical products (i.e. quartz vibrating structures). Size, weight
specifications
Figure 1: North American market perspectives (2001 to 2008)
93
the e xpec te d business by automotive, is growing from 190 m io. sensors (ASP 7$) in 200 I to 640 m i o. sensors (ASP 4.5$) i n 2008. In term of n umbe r of sensors,
to
20'000g with minimum impac t on specification Very robust MEMS and +180°C MEMS sensors in harsh environment are a lr ead y supplied with high volume opportunities
few
and current limitations when u sing MEMS sensors in harsh conjunction of material a nd SiC or SOl), advanced tech nol ogies
examples
with
many
other
environments (temperature, shock, vi br ation, environment, security). The (stand ard Si, micromachining
l o oki n g
applications. When
carefully
at
the
technol o gy. Further on, they im pos e themselves in a growing number of applicati ons thanks to their ability to perform in very aggressive en vi r onments. "Harsh environment" is the recogni zed acronym to describe the markets and ap p lications that behave under extreme conditions in term of temperature, shock, vibration, at mos phere (ESD, radiati on, chemistry .. . ) securit y .
or
of this family of products.
பைடு நூலகம்
2 Harsh environment market characteristic
There is not one precision r equi red. Typical examples of a pp lic ations are: Down hole drilling where accelerometers must behave in
Organised by the Institution of Engineering and Technology Measurement, Sensors, Instrumentation & NDT and Microsystems and Nanotechnology Networks
""--
Nowadays, standard MEMS techno logi es give access to a broad range of unexpected ne w applications op port unities by always p ushing the pr oducts at their limits, mainly in term of environmental constraints. Great pote nti als
evolution, largel y driven
probabl y not applicable at the sensor l e vel and certain ly lar ge l y
related
to
se curit y
or
jam ming
prote ct i on
of
communication.
market implantation, it is very
interesting to see that benefits of this technology go well beyo nd the obvious size ad van tage. Size and weight but also performance, power consumption, parall el man ufacturing capab ility and cost or reliability are common arguments in favour
and advanced assem bl y technique s are the k ey to
p r ovid e robust sensors. Within a large portfoli o of examples, the fol lowing applicatio ns will be presented and developed in more details: Accelerometers surviving shock levels up
technologies. The figure
sensors
used between
-120°C
1
shows the North A meri can MEMS senso rs
market trend specific to harsh environment products.
a reality and
applications can be
classified in
the following
domains:
aerospace &
de fenc e, energy (oil
& gaz)
and industrial
t echni ques
markets. Automotive is certainly also a very demanding market for rob ust sensors. It is interestin g to see how standard MEMS accelerometers, that present i ntrinsic good harsh environme nt capabilities, have facilitated the emergence of these new applications, which were simply difficult to get to with standard
The obj ective of this presenta tion is to review actual results
accelerometers and gyro) m ust survive ext reme gun hard shock with a minimum im pa ct on specification or extreme shock monitoring for industrial or military applications (> lO'OOOg)... These
Standard MEM§ §(pJJl1l§(Q)Jr Technologie§ if(Q)Jr lliI<alJr§1hl EnviJron.m(pJJmlc
Jean-Michel Stauffer Colibrys, Switzerland
© The Institute of Engineering and Technology
have been
unique and
specific market that fit with harsh in difficult environments are
environments but many examples can be found where measurements
demonstrated and have engendered development alliance to i mprove the performances of the products in so called harsh en vironmen t s : Imagine the utilization of an acc eleromet er in
Printed and published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Michael Faraday House, Six Hills Way, Stevenage, Herts SG12AY, UK