Low-Cost, Smart Vibration Sensor Utilizing CIFMEMS Technology and Postmolded-Plastic (PMP) Packing

The feasibility of a very lost cost approach to producing smart amplication-specific vibration sensors will be investigated. The approach consists of: (1) fabricating integrated circuit wafers containing vibration sensor precursors and signal processing electronics at a commercial Application-Specific Integrated-Circuit (ASIC) foundry service in a completely standard CMOS process; (2) processing the completed wafers to convert the sensor precursors into functional sensors on dies suitable for postmolded-plastic (PMP) packaging; and (3) packaging the dies at a commercial PMP packaging service. Sensor system protyping will be carried out with low-cost multi-project wafer runs and a full-wafer layout will be designed when prototyping is completed. Low-cost test wafers that simulate the sensor-wafer layout will be fabricated and run through steps 2 and 3 to verify that they are working properly. Then a small batch of full wafers will be run through steps 1, 2, and 3. The results will be somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000 single-chip demonstration vibration-sensor systems for testing by potential customers for custom systems.