MEMS sensor stands on the air outlet, production schedule has exceeded 14 months

As 5G, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and other technologies become more mature, the high prosperity of the MEMS industry continues, and the ecological environment of China's MEMS sensor industry is gradually improving. According to Jiwei.com, the current MEMS subsidiary of the United Kingdom-the world's leading MEMS pure foundry leader Sweden Silex, has a large number of MEMS orders in hand, and its production schedule has exceeded 14 months.

Sensors are one of the most demanded and basic links in the entire Internet of Things. With the development of the Internet of Things, the demand for sensors will increase day by day. According to MarketsandMarkets forecasts, the Internet of Things sensor market will reach $ 38.41 billion by 2022.

The development of the Internet of Things puts forward new requirements for sensors: sensors must be digitized, intelligent, and miniaturized, and at the same time low cost, low power consumption, high reliability, and long life must be achieved. In this context, smart sensors represented by MEMS (Micro-Electro-MechanicalSystem) have become an industry trend.

The advantages of MEMS sensors are very significant. They are highly integrated, small in size, and low in cost. They have achieved full automation control and are suitable for large-scale mass production. They were mass-produced by Bosch in 1995 and have been widely used in the automotive industry.

According to Yole Développement's forecast, the MEMS sensor market will grow rapidly at a compound annual growth rate of 13.5% from 2018 to 2020. The MEMS sensor market is expected to reach US $ 30.8 billion in 2020, with huge market space.

MEMS sensor refers to a new type of sensor that uses semiconductor manufacturing technology and micromachining technology to manufacture microstructures, microsensors, control processing circuits and even interfaces, communications and power supplies on one or more chips. Used to achieve cloud computing-the Internet's contact and feedback with the real world. It has a wide variety and can cover most physical, chemical, and biological characteristics testing, thereby supporting its wide range of industrial applications.

From the perspective of downstream industry applications, MEMS sensors are currently used in many industries and fields such as military, consumer electronics, automotive electronics, aerospace, medical equipment, etc., and are the main choices for building the IoT sensing layer in the future.

The consumer electronics and automotive industries are currently the main application areas of MEMS sensors. The two levels account for about 80% of total shipments, followed by the industrial and medical fields, which together account for about 14%. These industries together account for 94% of the market.

In the automotive industry, according to statistics, a medium-to-high-end gasoline vehicle has more than 90 sensors, and the value of a single bicycle exceeds 2,000 yuan. Among them, there are about 45-60 power transmission systems with a value of 1,000-1700 yuan for bicycles; 30-40 chassis safety systems with a value of 500-1000 yuan for bicycles; more than 20 body systems with a value of at least 200-600 yuan for bicycles.

MEMS chips have high requirements for electrical and mechanical characteristics. For sensor suppliers, chip capabilities and packaging processes are core technologies.

At present, there are about 20,000 types of sensors in the world, but high-end products and technologies are currently concentrated in the hands of leading manufacturers in the United States, Germany, and Japan. The market share of the top three global suppliers is 33.62% (Bosch), 12.34% (Sensata), 11.91% (NXP), for a total of 57%. The core advantage lies in its early development, the formation of a broad-covered product line, long-term accumulation of technical advantages, and the large number of customers thus forming higher barriers to entry.

The competition pattern of each type of sensor is generally highly concentrated. Generally, there are about 5 mainstream companies. For example, MEMS pressure sensor suppliers are mainly Bosch, Sensata, Infineon, NXP, Denso, and magnetic sensor suppliers are mainly NXP, Infineon, Allegro. , TDK-Micronas, Melexis, gas sensor suppliers are Bosch, NTK.

Among them, Bosch has the ability of the entire industry chain, adopts the IDM model, and produces it from the wafer fab to the final automotive electronic system. Sensata has chip design capabilities and sensor product development and manufacturing capabilities. Foundry; other NXP, Infineon, ADI, ST and other chip manufacturers combine IDM and Fabless two modes, according to the different product lines and flexible layout.

The domestic sensor market presents a low-end surplus and a mid- to high-end monopoly by foreign countries. China's MEMS industry is still relatively weak, with an import rate of over 60%, and the industry's growth rate has been slightly higher than the international market in recent years. In 2017, the size of China's MEMS sensor industry was 42 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20%; the five-year CAGR for 2013-2017 was 16.7%.

According to the data, the leading domestic MEMS sensor manufacturers occupy most of the market and the market concentration is relatively high. Domestic companies are more competitive in the low-end and after-sale market, and the technical level is quite different, but they are currently actively planning to focus on the development of strategic products such as PTC heaters and PM2.5 sensors.

Pressure sensors, microphones, accelerometers, gyroscopes, inertial combination sensors, and RF MEMS devices with high penetration rates in the field of MEMS sensors have also become the main components of the MEMS sensor market.

Some domestic smart sensor manufacturers:

MEMS inertial sensor, MEMS package: Suzhou Gusong / MEMS sensor, laser inertial guidance, fiber optic inertial guidance, gyroscope: Neville Technology / MEMS microphone: GoerTek, AAC acoustics / gas sensor, infrared sensor: Hanwei Electronics Infrared sensor: Gaode infrared / temperature sensor, rainfall sensor: Huagong Technology / tire pressure monitoring: Siwei Tuxin.

At present, China has become the world's most important automotive and smartphone market. In addition, China's drone shipments are also growing explosively. The market for tire pressure gauges and fuel consumption-related sensors is huge. The demand for pressure sensors such as altimeters applied to products will increase rapidly.

In recent years, domestic manufacturers are actively catching up with foreign companies, taking advantage of the industrial transformation opportunities of smart sensors to actively lay out the MEMS industry chain, and constantly improve the competitiveness of design, manufacturing and packaging and testing. Expansion and extension to other fields, and domestic progress in the field of smart sensors will lay a good foundation for the popularization of IoT-related applications.