Award Winning Microsystems
Award-winning success story
What started out in 1990 as an idea on paper in Gerlingen near Stuttgart led just ten years later to Bosch being the market leader in automotive micromechanical sensors. This success story culminated in the inventors of the basic technology, Franz Lärmer and his colleague Andrea Urban, being awarded the prize of "European Inventors of the Year 2007".
However, numerous further obstacles still had to be overcome on the way to large-scale production, such as development of simulation procedures and models for computer-supported accurate configuration and optimization of sensor designs, making forecasts on the reliability of long sensor service lives in excess of 15 years, and safeguarding large-scale production and electrical testability as early as in their preliminary stages. The researchers and design engineers feed their simulation programs with the geometry and material data of a draft design and use computer simulation to determine the robustness of the sensor function, for example, against specific manufacturing tolerances. The Results derived from these calculations in the end give rise to an optimized sensor design, which is actually produced in silicon.
Production is followed by testing of the sensor operation. This is achieved in the most efficient way not individually by applying a test pressure or a test acceleration to individual sensors, but rather directly onto the wafer with its chessboard-like arrangement of hundreds of sensor elements. In addition to electrically measuring all the sensor elements of a wafer, the test engineers can read off from specific test structures where the specifications are met on the wafer and where there are deviations. Such wafer landscapes can be used to optimize the manufacturing steps to achieve a maximum possible uniform high sensor quality over the entire wafer.
Since then, OMM sensors have taken hold in the automobile and many other fields of application. They measure the yaw rate of the vehicle for the ESP function; they detect an impact for triggering the airbag; in the engine they register the inducted air flow rate for the engine-management system – plus, at the same time they are small, robust and economic. Today, around 200 million sensors are produced every year.
In recognition of their great achievement in the industrialization of the underlying basic technologies, Jiri Marek from the Automotive Electronics Division, founder of micromechanics operations in Reutlingen and today's Director of Development, Michael Offenberg, and Frank Melzer, General Manager of Bosch Sensortec were awarded the German President's Future Prize 2008.
New products in the pipeline
Lärmer refers to surface micromechanics today as being a mature technology used by Bosch. In future, Bosch Research will also transfer its know-how in microsystems technology to other business segments, for instance in the field of electronic consumer goods. A pressure sensor in cellphones and navigation systems supplies information on topographic height. Acceleration sensors protect falling hard disks against data loss, or they add certain functions to cellphone games. There are no limits on the imagination. "We have already done significant groundwork here which will result in numerous new products in the future" commented Lärmer.
What started out in 1990 as an idea on paper in Gerlingen near Stuttgart led just ten years later to Bosch being the market leader in automotive micromechanical sensors. This success story culminated in the inventors of the basic technology, Franz Lärmer and his colleague Andrea Urban, being awarded the prize of "European Inventors of the Year 2007".
However, numerous further obstacles still had to be overcome on the way to large-scale production, such as development of simulation procedures and models for computer-supported accurate configuration and optimization of sensor designs, making forecasts on the reliability of long sensor service lives in excess of 15 years, and safeguarding large-scale production and electrical testability as early as in their preliminary stages. The researchers and design engineers feed their simulation programs with the geometry and material data of a draft design and use computer simulation to determine the robustness of the sensor function, for example, against specific manufacturing tolerances. The Results derived from these calculations in the end give rise to an optimized sensor design, which is actually produced in silicon.
Production is followed by testing of the sensor operation. This is achieved in the most efficient way not individually by applying a test pressure or a test acceleration to individual sensors, but rather directly onto the wafer with its chessboard-like arrangement of hundreds of sensor elements. In addition to electrically measuring all the sensor elements of a wafer, the test engineers can read off from specific test structures where the specifications are met on the wafer and where there are deviations. Such wafer landscapes can be used to optimize the manufacturing steps to achieve a maximum possible uniform high sensor quality over the entire wafer.
Since then, OMM sensors have taken hold in the automobile and many other fields of application. They measure the yaw rate of the vehicle for the ESP function; they detect an impact for triggering the airbag; in the engine they register the inducted air flow rate for the engine-management system – plus, at the same time they are small, robust and economic. Today, around 200 million sensors are produced every year.
In recognition of their great achievement in the industrialization of the underlying basic technologies, Jiri Marek from the Automotive Electronics Division, founder of micromechanics operations in Reutlingen and today's Director of Development, Michael Offenberg, and Frank Melzer, General Manager of Bosch Sensortec were awarded the German President's Future Prize 2008.
New products in the pipeline
Lärmer refers to surface micromechanics today as being a mature technology used by Bosch. In future, Bosch Research will also transfer its know-how in microsystems technology to other business segments, for instance in the field of electronic consumer goods. A pressure sensor in cellphones and navigation systems supplies information on topographic height. Acceleration sensors protect falling hard disks against data loss, or they add certain functions to cellphone games. There are no limits on the imagination. "We have already done significant groundwork here which will result in numerous new products in the future" commented Lärmer.
The sensitive sensor layers must be manufactured under clean-room conditions. This is done in the Reutlingen plant (Baden-Württemberg).
