Magnetics Business & Technology - November/December 2024 - 14

FEATURE ARTICLE
Magnetometer Embedded on a Chip Among the Targets for Nanusens
The appointments follow on the heels of Nanusens' first IP license
agreement for its MEMS-in-ASICs technology with Azoteq, a
pioneer in high volume sensor fusion ICs used in industrial and
consumer applications. Also a fabless semiconductor company,
Azoteq was featured in an earlier article in Magnetics Magazine
for its Digital Crown device that uses Hall-effect sensing to detect
the rotation of a magnet in consumer electronic products.
Magnetometers embedded on a chip are on the product development
radar for British MEMS company Nanusens. Shown above is one of its
innovative sensors with detection circuitry (right) created within the
CMOS layers of an ASIC (left).
Having already built an accelerometer embedded into a chip and
issued its first IP license, British company Nanusens plans to roll
out its MEMS technology to other sensors including magnetometers,
gyroscopes, pressure sensors and microphones. Recently,
it has been beefing up its leadership roster to support expansion
into more markets and for further fund-raising. Its innovative
technology enables building nanoscale structures within standard
CMOS metal layers.
Phil Daniell, new
vice president of
ASIC engineering at
Nanusens
In November 2023 it recruited semiconductor
industry veteran Dr. Phil Daniell to
become vice president of ASIC engineering.
" In my 25 years of silicon ASIC engineering,
I found that the integrated MEMS
technology innovated by Nanusens to be
one of the most exciting and disruptive
technologies that I have seen in my career.
The prospect of implementing MEMS on
the same die as more typical digital and
analogue CMOS circuits is truly groundbreaking. "
A
month earlier, Nanusens announced
that Matt Crowley, another industry
veteran, has joined the company as a
strategic advisor. " The fabless semiconductor
industry has thrived for decades
because it uses a single standard
manufacturing process, CMOS, that
allows the industry to achieve massive
scale, lower cost and constantly improving
performance. This dynamic does not
exist in the MEMS industry which is why
it takes many years and tens of millions
Perfecting the building of sensors within chips
Nanusens describes itself as the only company to have perfected
the building of sensors within chips. The micro-electromechanical
systems (MEMS) are built using standard chip manufacturing
techniques (CMOS) that are used to build the electronic circuits
on chips and at the same time as the rest of the chip circuitry. The
key impact of their technology is that chips with Nanusens embedded
sensors can be made in any of the many CMOS fab in virtually
unlimited numbers and with the high yields that are normal in
such fabs with the benefits of low unit costs that fab production
provides.
New strategic advisor
Matt Crowley
of dollars to create a new MEMS product. Nanusens is the first
MEMS company to convincingly demonstrate technology that will
change this paradigm by making MEMS directly in CMOS itself.
" When I first met Nanusens' CEO, Josep Montanya, I was sceptical
of his claim that Nanusens can make a variety of MEMS
devices such as accelerometers, pressure sensors and antenna
switches. As someone with 20 years of experience in MEMS,
I have seen many claims that could not live up to the hype,
but, as I dug into the data and asked hard questions, I became
convinced that, although it has not yet been proven at scale, this
technology does work. Transforming the MEMS business model
from one with discrete devices manufactured on dedicated lines
to MEMS as a licensable IP block at major CMOS foundries will
change the paradigm for a wide class of MEMS devices. "
A key innovation by the company is development of a novel
control circuit that measures the capacitance changes within the
sensor to provide sensor data. Like the sensor itself, this is also
14 Magnetics Business & Technology * November/December 2024
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Magnetics Business & Technology - November/December 2024

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