MEMS applications: It's just the beginning, lot of space to explore

Mems expert ST Microelectronics is shipping billions of mems sensors each year, and is the first company which has generated a revenue exceeding US dollar 1 billion from mems alone. The reason for such a huge growth is due to the use of mems in consumer electronic devices such as smart phones and also widely used in cars. Though mems is seeing a big growth from last 4 to 5 years, it looks like the growth has just begun, and in the future, there is going to be much more growth driven by the expansion of mems usage in lot more applications. To give you an idea of what exact applications are driving the market now, in this article we provide the kind of applications and the devices integrating mems inside them. Much of this writing is based on the recent presentation made to the media by ST's mems expert Vishal Goyal, Senior Technical Marketing Manager, Analog, MEMS & Sensors Group STMicroelectronics in Bangalore. Mobile devices: The biggest market for mems is smart phones which uses accelerometer, gyroscopes in most of the smart phones. Mems microphone, pressure sensors and compass are also used in today's latest phones. Today's mems-based technology integrated in a phone can turn your phone into a gesture device, a tennis bat or any such motion dependent action device. The user can know the height from the sea level, see environment conditions in the smart phone. ...