from May 22 to May 24, 2007 in Long Beach/USA

German Pavilion Stand 1437

Fraunhofer IPMS carries out customer specific developments in the field of microelectronic and microsystem technology in Dresden. The aim is to act as a business partner in helping to transfer innovative ideas into new products. The Fraunhofer IPMS is prepared for serial production of modern CMOS compatible MEMS technology products in its own clean room facilities. About 200 scientists work with modern equipment to provide customer specific solutions in the field of circuit design, sensors and sensor systems, micromechanical actuators and actuator systems, lightmodulating microsystems, image processing and image transmission and organic electronics. At the SID 2007 Fraunhofer IPMS will present:

1. Tilt compensated laser projector

Laser projection is a promising approach to overcome the limitations of small displays in handheld devices. Fraunhofer IPMS has successfully demonstrated miniaturized laser projection systems with size down to 17 mm x 7 mm x 5 mm which are based on its own two-dimensional resonant micro scanning mirror (a MOEMS device) for light deflection. Nevertheless, projection with handheld devices has its limitations. Any movement, especially shaking of the hand, will affect the quality of the picture. Using motion sensors, i.e. acceleration sensors and gyroscopes – so called inertial measurement units (IMU), the movement can be detected and compensated. Even more, movement can actively be used as input device like mouse or game controller. A combination of a MOEMS based laser projection system and an IMU will be demonstrated at SID 2007. As test object a commercial racing wheel was chosen. Along the axis of the racing wheel the projector has been mounted. The position of the racing wheel is measured by an IMU with a three axes acceleration sensor and three single axis gyroscopes, all of them commercially available. The rotation of the wheel is compensated for a stable picture position and used for controlling a car racing game. The frame rate that can be achieved is up to 20 per second with a resolution of 300 x 300 pixels. In future handheld devices, which could be a combination of cellular phone, PDA and game box, using inertial measurement units, tilt compensated projection and input device function will be realized. Current work is aimed at free movement of the device in combination with continuous development on the laser projection system itself.

2. OLED on silicon integration

So far there is no technology capable in combining monolithic integration of highly efficient and stable light sources into standard silicon CMOS. For the first time OLED technology allows both large-area deposition and micro-patterning of light emitters on top of uppermost metal layers of CMOS chips. Therefore CMOS active area space below the OLED electrode is available for additional circuitry in a System-on-Chip setup, including OLED driving (as minor part of it). OLED processing is performed by post-processing at wafer-level. return of the wafers into CMOS processes is not required. Major applications are expected for microdisplays and optoelectronics (organic microsystems).

Applications microdisplays:

• electronic viewfinder
• projection
• head mounted displays (mobile communication, consumer electronic, …)
• optical inspection
• patterned illumination

Applications optoelectronics:

• light barriers (reflection type)
• opto-couplers
• optical sensors (chemical, medical → fluorescence, photoplethysmography,…)
• communication (chip-to-chip, board-to-board, chip-to board)

Additonally the OLED fabrication technology offers firstly the possibility to integrate highly efficient light source into silicon to establish a new class of organic based microsystems. The Fraunhofer IPMS offers developments in this novel application area. At the SID 2007 the Fraunhofer IPMS is going to present highly efficient OLEDs integrated into silicon backplanes in the form of rows or arrays for opto electronic and microdisplay applications.