Associate Professor Muhannad Bakir and student Hyung Suk Yang, both of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, discuss their TECHCON 2010 paper, "Marriage of CMOS and MEMS using Flexible Interconnects and TSVs."

With the two methods presented, the researchers note that any kind of MEMS sensor can be integrated with CMOS-based electronics. Key to their platform is the physical separation of the MEMS sensor from the electronics. The researchers independently fabricate the sensor and the electronics, optimize them separately, and then put them together. The researchers describe the interconnect challenges and their two solutions.

With the growth of the MEMS technology market–almost doubling between 2004 and 2009–this work in 3D integration should be of special interest.

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