Participants at the third annual conference discussed topics such as the upcoming MEMS roadmap, infrastructure development, technology transfer, and governmental support. Walsh and Markus were two of the cochairpersons for the conference, which was sponsored by NJIT, SEMI, and the Engineering Foundation. Perry Cook, a principal with Silicon Sense in Culpepper, VA, delivered a paper on behalf of VLSI Standards focusing on the industry's need for standard reference materials. The industry does talk a lot about there being a need to improve on yields and to improve on the overall cost of manufacturing, and better yields is one way of doing that. The other huge issue has to do with the packaging of MEMS devices.
Every package is different, because every device is different.
It's not like memory chip packaging. Despite different applications, there are similarities in fabrication approaches. MEMS folks who are trying to build on the planar processing. Wafer bonding is a hybrid between bulk and sacrificial surface processing. It's adding material that might be a bulk type.