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Ten analog, MEMS and sensor startups to watch in 2014

Ten analog, MEMS and sensor startups to watch in 2014

Feature articles |
By eeNews Europe



With the beginning of a new year we thought it would be interesting to think about who are the rising stars in this area. What follows are ten private companies worth tracking in 2014 listed in alphabetical order.

1 DelfMEMS SA (Villeneuve d’Ascq, France) is a developer of MEMS switches for radio frequency tuning. Founded in 2005 the company raised €8.2 million (about $10.5 million) in a Series B round of financing in 2013 and appointed Guillaume d’Eyssautier as CEO for a push on mobile markets. www.delfmems.com

See DelfMEMS secures $10.5 million, hires CEO

2 Dual Aperture Inc. (Palo Alto, Calif.) has developed a dual aperture RGB-IR sensor technology that can combine imaging and depth perception in a single sensor. It can consumer, automotive, and industrial products to form the basis of gesture recognition command and control. Founded in 2009. www.dual-aperture.com

See Sensor captures images and gestures

3. Isorg SA (Grenoble, France), a spin-off from the CEA-Liten research organization founded in 2010, started out making single- or few-element organic sensors for use in presence and gesture detection. The company has teamed up with Plastic Logic Ltd. to create multi-pixel conformable organic image sensors on plastic substrates. www.isorg.fr

See Isorg shows thin-film plastic image sensor

4. Merus Audio AS (Herlev, Denmark), founded in 2010, launched an audio amplifier IC in 2013 based on its Eximo architecture. The chip is claimed to be significantly more energy efficient that other Class-D amplifiers and is intended to address home audio and mobile phone applications. www.merus-audio.com

See Danish startup launches innovative audio amplifier

5. MicroGen Systems Inc. (Rochester, New York) was founded in 2007 by Robert Andosca, who serves as CEO. The company develops MEMS for energy harvesting and sensors in wireless sensor node and mobile electronics applications. www.microgensystems.co

See Piezo-MEMS vibration energy harvesters enable wireless sensor network

6. MiraMEMS Sensing Technology Co. Ltd. (Suzhou, China), founded in 2011, is one of the first MEMS companies to emerge in China. In 2012 the company introduced the MM3A310, a three-axis capacitive linear accelerometer, including micromachined sensor and ASIC signal conditioning and interface die. It remains to be seen whether the company can get closer the leading edge with 9-axis and hub type devices. www.miramems.com

7. NikkoIA SAS (Grenoble, France) was founded in 2011 as a spin-off from Siemens AG. The company is using the combination of organic and inorganic materials sensitive to specific wavelengths and deposited as thin film layers onto industry-standard electronic substrates to develop detectors and image sensors in the visible and near infrared parts of the spectrum. www.nikkoia.com

See NikkoIA gets European money for organic NIR sensor

8. Pyreos Ltd. (Edinburgh, Scotland) is a developer of infrared sensors on silicon MEMS membranes, which allows them to operate uncooled. The company spun out of Siemens in 2007 and has raised $4 million to help it pitch for design wins in smartphones and tablet computers where its sensors can be used for gesture recognition. www.pyreos.com

See IR sensor startup preps smartphone bid

9. Qualtre Inc. (Marlborough, Mass) Founded in 2008, Qualtre is a venture-backed company commercializing solid-state silicon MEMS motion sensors for consumer electrronics based on bull-acoustic wave (BAW) materials. The founder and chief technology officer is Farrokh Ayazi, at Georgia Technology Institute’s Integrated MEMS Laboratory. www.qualtre.com

See Qualtre demonstrates silicon MEMS BAW gyroscope

10. Sand 9 Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.), founded in 2007 has introduced its first timing products based on MEMS-scale piezoelectric principles. Devices are intended to challenge high-precision temperature compensated crystal oscillators (TCXOs). www.sand9.com

See MEMS oscillator meets industrial, military specs

We’d also like to give honourable mentions to Sol Chip Ltd. (Haifa Israel), founded in 2009 and ActLight SA (Lausanne, Switzerland) founded in 2011. Both companies are working on chip-scale energy harvesting from light. As their chips are not sensors or MEMS devices and are likely to be used as a battery replacements, they lie more squarely in the power management domain, but they represent interesting developments nonetheless.

See Startup offers chip-scale solar energy harvester

 

 

 

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