Bosch Manufactures Two Billion MEMS Sensors Since Production Began 16 Years Ago

Bosch sets a new production volume record: the technology company has manufactured two billion MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) sensors since production began 16 years ago. While it took 13 years to produce the first billion, the two-billion mark was recently crossed, just three years later. And production volumes are still growing. Recently, annual production has reached almost half a billion units – more than 1.3 million every working day.

Bosch is by far the world leader in the MEMS sensor market. The automotive and consumer electronics industries are the biggest users of these sensors, and Bosch serves them via its Automotive Electronics division and its Sensortec and Akustica subsidiaries.

Bosch is one of the most experienced players in the development and production of micromechanical sensors. It was Bosch researchers who developed the basic technology of bulk and surface micromachining from the middle of the 1980s onward; this is why one of the main production processes is known in the industry as the “Bosch process.” It is the key to high-volume production.

Economic success was quick to follow the start of production in 1995. The research was honored with prestigious awards: the European Patent Office’s European Inventor Award 2007, and the 2008 German Future Prize, Federal President’s Award for Technology and Innovation.

The first market for MEMS sensors was in automotive electronics. Here, the miniaturization of sensors plays only a secondary role. Reliability and robustness are much more important. Bosch Automotive Electronics now produces several hundred vehicle-specific varieties of micromechanical sensor that make cars cleaner and safer, more economical and more comfortable. Each year sees an increase in the number of different varieties and in overall volumes. A modern car features up to 100 of these sensors – and the number is growing. For instance, they are the “senses” for injection systems in gasoline and diesel engines, they are what makes life-saving airbags deploy, and they are an essential part of the ESP anti-skid system.

In consumer electronics, MEMS sensors make mobile devices such as smartphones or laptops safe, convenient and user-friendly. The demands of this sector are fundamentally different from those of the automotive industry. For devices to be practical, the sensors they contain need to be tiny, and they must use very little power to conserve battery life. But most important of all, sensors must be cost-effective if many millions are to be used. Today’s smallest Bosch Sensortec MEMS sensors have an edge length of two millimeters and are less than one millimeter high, and their standby power consumption is even lower than the battery’s self-discharge rate.

In navigation devices and cell phones with a navigation function, MEMS pressure sensors’ measurements of changes in altitude are accurate enough to allow for navigation even within a multi-story building. MEMS acceleration sensors make it possible to use hand movements to control devices, switch the display of content from portrait to landscape format, prevent the loss of data on hard drives when a notebook is dropped, and open up new worlds of experiences to users of new game consoles.

The latest development is a triaxial MEMS magnetic field sensor. By measuring the Earth’s magnetic field, it can determine the geographic direction.

MEMS microphones for consumer applications are the specialty of Bosch’s Akustica subsidiary. These tiny microphones, measuring just a few millimeters, stand out for their small size, robustness and immunity to high-frequency signals from surrounding circuitry and displays, enabling consumer device manufacturers to integrate two or more microphones for enhanced noise suppression.