Internet of Things (IoT) becomes a powerful engine to the fourth industrial revolution for humankind, which covers the interactive implementations of smart city, smart manufacturing, smart living, smart vehicle, and smart me (e.g., fitness, wellness, and health care). As a key driver for IoT, the Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS) sensors and actuators have been widely employed in current consumer and wearable electronics. Thus the technologies to implement and integrate micro sensors, actuators, and integrated circuits (ICs) attract a lot of attentions from academia and industry. The mature CMOS fabrication processes are available in many IC foundries. It is cost-effective to exploit the existing CMOS fabrication technologies to implement micro devices for IoT applications. This talk presents the approach to implement and integrate various MEMS transducers by using the standard CMOS processes. Moreover, the MEMS ecosystems at Taiwan will be summarized, and further show many possibilities to integrate and network the existing MEMS resources and organizations. Thus, the development of micro sensors and IoT could be enhanced by leveraging the MEMS ecosystems at Taiwan, and the Moon Shot project of speaker will be introduced as an example. Finally, the talk will discuss various challenges and opportunities of MEMS sensors industries at Taiwan.
Weileun Fang, PhD
FIEEE, FInstP
NTHU Chair Professor
PME Dept./NEMS Institute
National Tsing Hua Univ. (Taiwan)
No. 101, Kuang Fu Rd. 2Sec.,
Hsinchu 300, Taiwan
Prof. Fang has been working in the MEMS field for more than 20 years. He received his Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) in 1995. His doctoral research focused on the determining of the mechanical properties of thin films using MEMS structures. He joined the Power Mechanical Engineering Department at the National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan) in 1996, where he is now a Chair Professor as well as a faculty of NEMS Institute. From June to September 1999, he was at California Inst. of Tech. as a visiting associate. He became the IEEE Fellow in 2015 to recognize his contribution in MEMS area.
Prof. Fang has published more than 160 SCI journal papers, 300 international conference papers, and 80 patents (all in MEMS field). He is now the Chief Editor of JMM (SCI journal by IoP), the Board Member of IEEE Trans on Device and Materials Reliability, and Sensors and Materials, and the Associate Editor of IEEE Sensors J. He served as the Chief Delegate of Taiwan for the World Micromachine Summit (MMS) in 2008-12, and the General Chair for MMS 2012. He also served as the TPC (Tech. program committee) of IEEE MEMS’04, ’07, and ’10, the TPC of Transducers’07, and the ETPC (Executive TPC) of Transducers’09-’15. He has become the member of ISC (International steering committee) of Transducers from 2009, and served as the ISC Chair in 2017-19. He was also the General Chair of Transducers’17. He serves as the Asia Regional Program Chair of IEEE Sensors’10, and the TPC Chair of IEEE Sensors’12.
There are more than 50 PhD and 90 Master students graduated from Prof. Fang’s group so far. Most of them are working in the MEMS and micro sensors related companies, such as TSMC, UMC, ASE, apm, Apple, xMEMS, TDK-InvenSense, Coretronic MEMS, Sensortek, Delta, PixArt, mCube, etc. He is now the VP of MEMS and Sensors Committee of SEMI Taiwan. He is the Standing Committee Member of the Nanotechnology and Micro System Association (NMA), Taiwan. He also served as the Chairman of NMA in 2013-14. Moreover, Prof. Fang also serves as the Technical Consultant for many MEMS companies in Taiwan.