New-Tech Europe Magazine | Q1 2021

such as life sciences, security, instrumentation, agrofood… The current approach to use III-V materials and flip-chip assembly will not be sufficient to reach the necessary miniaturization and cost- efficient manufacturing goals. For this to happen, upscalable CMOS- based technology on 200 or 300mm wafers is an indispensable enabler. Aside from these quantitative targets, the industry is also looking for new modalities and additional ways to integrate sensor and actuator solutions. For example, but not exclusively, to get certain applications within closer reach of a larger number of end users. A good example is Apple’s integration of a light-detection and ranging (LiDAR) scanner in the iPad Pro 11. The trends in mobile displays can be taken as an example to get an idea of the possibilities in a wide range of applications. OLED displays are becoming the dominant technology for mobile phones and watches. There is barely a need to further increase the resolution (~500ppi in the state of the art), but the trend is to make the display as large as the screen, i.e., to remove all visible bezels. As a consequence, the sensors that are integrated in the front screen need to disappear in the display: ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, selfie camera, fingerprint sensor, face recognition, heartbeat. Furthermore, we may expect in the future more sensors to find their way in the display, e.g. an integrated 5G antenna, or haptic feedback. And as the smartphone is becoming the prime personal assistant, there is a trend to integrate in particular more health- monitoring sensors, such as an

Figure 1: By processing a thin-film multilayer stack with photoactive layer sensitive in the infrared range (right), on top of a Silicon readout circuitry (ROIC), imec created an IR-sensitive CMOS imager (left) compatible with mass manufacturing.

both by leveraging on the available semiconductor expertise. As for new modalities, the development of a short-wave-infrared CMOS camera is a good example of a recent achievement. In 2019, imec demonstrated a camera- integrated solution allowing Si- based CMOS sensors to detect short-wave infrared wavelengths that are normally out of reach

oxygen saturation sensor, glucose sensor, analyzer for allergens, etc... And this is ‘just’ about smartphones. Similar scenario’s can be depicted for almost all other application areas as well. Technology enablers Imec’s focus is twofold: to enable miniaturization and to develop new sensor and actuator modalities;

Figure 2: Imec develops integrated touchless interfaces based on ultrasound-based haptic feedback.

New-Tech Magazine Europe l 21