sensiBel announced a strategic manufacturing partnership with X-Celeprint, the leading company in Micro-Transfer Printing (MTP) industrial solutions for combining tiny, non-native components on a single substrate to achieve high-volume, high-precision production. sensiBel is using MTP to scale production of its core enabling technology, optoKore — the optical-detection module in its acoustic MEMS sensors, including its 80dBA SNR digital microphones.
sensiBel announced a strategic manufacturing partnership with X-Celeprint, the leading company in Micro-Transfer Printing (MTP) industrial solutions for combining tiny, non-native components on a single substrate to achieve high-volume, high-precision production. sensiBel is using MTP to scale production of its core enabling technology, optoKore — the optical-detection module in its acoustic microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) sensors, including its 80dBA signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) digital microphones.
“The micro-electronics industry has long sought a means to overcome the traditional limitations in photonics assembly. Solving the complexity of heterogeneous integration at the nano scale, X-Celeprint’s MTP is that solution,” says Kieran Harney, CEO, sensiBel. “It effectively maintains extreme precision while delivering high manufacturing throughput, increasing functionality and improving efficiency.
“In moving to MTP, we’re aligning the manufacture of optoKore — a crucial differentiator in our microphone — with standard MEMS processes at wafer scale. As a result, we can make thousands of our optical modules on a single wafer. This puts us in a great position to meet demand for high-volume applications, including consumer electronics,” adds Harney.
X-Celeprint’s MTP is enabling the mass-market adoption of high-performance photonics through the heterogeneous integration of components with repeatable nanoscale alignment in high-volume manufacturing environments. According to the Irish company, MTP replaces higher-cost, slow die-bonding of individual components — which is difficult to scale — with fast array transfer of multiple device types, such as lasers, modulators, photodetectors, amplifiers, and passive optics.
“sensiBel is redefining acoustic excellence in a micro-scale form factor,” comments Peter Smyth, CEO of X-Celeprint. “We’re thrilled that they’re using our MTP platform to scale production of their ground-breaking optical-detection module, the exciting core micro-component transforming MEMS microphones today — and future acoustic sensors tomorrow.”
sensiBel’s optical MEMS microphones integrate a traditional ASIC and MEMS sensor, combined with optoKore, a precision optical-detection module that captures the displacement of the MEMS-based diaphragm. As the diaphragm moves, the optical path changes, and the microphone converts these changes directly into a digital audio signal.
Measuring displacement from femtometer-level to micrometer-level (10-15 to 10-6 m), optoKore supports high dynamic range (>136dB), wide frequency range (DC to MHz), low power consumption, small size (mm3 range), and fully digital output. optoKore enables market-differentiating attributes in sensiBel’s acoustic sensors, including its first-generation MEMS microphones — which achieve a minimum of 80dBA SNR, greater than 146dB SPL acoustic overload point (AOP), and over 132dB dynamic range.
Headquartered in Cork, Ireland, X-Celeprint is a leading provider of high-volume micro-transfer printing solutions for heterogeneous integration of photonics and optical components, offering production print capacity at selected global locations in Europe and Asia. The company provides process technologies for development of printable devices such as lasers, uLEDs, photodetectors, and passive optics, and is the leading manufacturer of automated MTP tools required for high-yield production at volume.
www.x-celeprint.com
www.sensibel.com
