FP7-Project “MSP - Multi Sensor Platform for Smart Building Management” announces an extended Multi-Project-Wafer service with sensor functions – a big step forward to a European ecosystem for integrated multi sensor systems

The €18 million FP7 project “MSP - Multi Sensor Platform for Smart Building Management” project has achieved an important milestone in creating a European ecosystem for integrated multi sensor systems. An extended Multi-Project-Wafer (MPW) service providing sensing functions and key features for 3D-integration of sensor devices is available for customers: Specific optoelectronic sensing functions and Through Silicon Vias (TSVs) technology are offered as MPW service by the Full Service Foundry division of ams AG and the partner Fraunhofer-IIS. This enables customers to design microchips with integrated optical sensors being ready for 3D-stacking of other sensor devices. Presently the sensing functions are limited to devices which can be fabricated on CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) level.

To push the performance of sensor devices, the MSP consortium employs nanotechnology based materials, such as nanowires, nanoparticles and graphene. Integration of these nanomaterials with CMOS devices requires advanced manufacturing technologies. For fully exploiting the potential of these nanomaterials the MSP consortium plans to offer these technologies on a research-level to customers as add-on to the CMOS-based MPW service. This extends the current MPW service well beyond the state-of-the-art and enables companies, R&D institutes, and universities for prototyping, evaluating, and screening of entirely new technologies. In particular for SMEs this will be a golden opportunity for early take up of KETs for new device and product development. This extended MPW service could be the key towards a European ecosystem for integrated multi sensor systems.

Professor Julian Gardner, Head of the Electrical and Electronic Stream at Warwick School of Engineering, is one of the researchers in this ambitious, global, multi-partner project. For more details on the project, visit: www.multisensorplatform.eu