VTI officially enters the MEMS crystal market

In order to expand the consumer electronics market, VTI broadened its product line and announced its entry into the MEMS crystal market at the 2010 Mexico Electronics Show.

As a pioneer of MEMS, the crystal oscillator market has shown steady development in today's rapidly developing market. “On the analysis of MEMS products currently on the market, Yole Développement made the MEMS crystal oscillator market the most promising market in 2015, and it is the highest CAGR market for 2009 to 2015. It is expected that the MEMS crystal oscillator will From USD 7.9 million in 2009 to USD 644.9 million in 2015,” said Vice President of VTI Consumer Electronics. Sten Stockmann said that VTI crystal products will use VTI's 3D MEMS and packaging technology. VTI currently uses Chip-on-MEMS technology to package cost-rate sensors. The same technology will be applied to the crystal, but the opposite MEMS-on-Chip technology.

Mature MEMS technology

Quartz Crystals - Most of the high-performance electronic systems are clocked by quartz oscillators - and they face challenges in developing fast consumer devices. The stability and frequency sensitivity of the oscillations, like the size reduction of the quartz oscillator, are mutually constrained because of the increased crystal impedance of these newer oscillators. Small quartz oscillators are more sensitive to vibrations in terms of frequency deviations, just as small packaged oscillators have greater tolerances for mechanical vibrations.

Silicon MEMS oscillators replace quartz crystals. Silicon MEMS oscillators are small in size, low in price, and are less susceptible to shock and vibration.

VTI offers low cost, small size and ultra high performance solutions

MEMS oscillation technology has been popularized in the market, and it faces the problems of low accuracy and large temperature drift. A typical MEMS oscillator can have a frequency of 10,000 ppm. In addition, the MEMS oscillator temperature drifts around 30ppm/degrees Celsius.

With this oscillation technique, the ASIC must be designed to compensate for frequency errors, increasing size, cost, power consumption, and noise. The result is an increase in the cost of the oscillator and no competitive advantage.

VTI technology serves these common obstacles and provides a competitive quartz crystal. In early 2011, VTI will release its first crystal.