Recent Development of MEMS and Crystal Oscillators and their Impacts on the Industry

Due to their high Q and temperature-stable properties, quartz crystal oscillators
are important clock sources in consumer, commercial, industrial, and military products
for many years. The demand for quartz crystals and crystal oscillators has been increasing
steadily between 4 and 10% annually since the dotcom market collapse in 2000~2001.
The total market for 2010 is expected to exceed $4.2B. The quartz crystal and crystal oscillator
industry has made major progresses in miniaturization, performance enhancement,
and cost reduction in the past ten years. The unique fabrication and encapsulation requirements
though render quartz crystals and crystal oscillators difficult or close to impossible to be integrated
onto the silicon-based IC platforms. The recent strong marketing push of the all silicon MEMS
resonators and oscillators seemed to re-ignite the interest in displacing the quartz crystal technology
and to open up again the prospect in clock source integration. This talk reviews the development
of the all silicon MEMS oscillators and crystal oscillators in the past few years and commenting on
what challenges they face in the highly competitive frequency control products industry. Speaker Bio:C.S. Lam received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1984. He was an MTS and a manager
at the Frequency Control Products Division of Bell Laboratories until 1995. From 1995 to 2002, he was
the Director of R&D at Vectron International responsible for the development of crystal and SAW products.
From 2002 to 2007, he was the CTO at TXC Corporation in Taiwan. Presently he is the Director of Product Development & Marketing at Epson Electronics America in San Jose, CA responsible for supporting the sales
and product marketing of Epson Toycom's quartz crystal, crystal oscillator, and sensor products
in North America.

Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 101

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Behnam Analui