As you might guess from the company’s name, memsstar is involved in microelectromechanical system (MEMS) devices. The company offers manufacturing equipment for “MEMS-specific production,” says CEO Tony McKie.

Based in Livingston, Scotland, memsstar wants to help in making “MEMS on top of silicon,” he adds.

“There are no such things as standard MEMS,” McKie notes. “MEMS are becoming more complicated.”

While most people are familiar with the MEMS devices in smartphones, like accelerometers and pressure sensors, the Internet of Things will call for different kinds of MEMS and other products, according to McKie. “You need hardware to do that,” he says of IoT. “The rest is filled by software.”

McKie estimates the worldwide market for MEMS production equipment is currently worth about $10 million to $15 million a year. “It’s a growing market,” he says. IoT and other new technologies call for “more and more things that are not CMOS-related,” he adds. Producing new types of MEMS will likely see the startup of more 200-millimeter wafer fabrication facilities, according to McKie.

The primary competitor of memsstar is the SPTS Technologies subsidiary of Orbotech, McKie says.

The company is also involved in refurbishing and remanufacturing deposition and etch equipment from such vendors as Applied Materials, Lam Research, and Novellus Systems (now part of Lam), while providing spare parts for those systems.

Founded in 2003 as Point 35 Microstructures, memsstar received an investment from Albion Ventures in 2007, and has since been a self-funded company, McKie says.

By: DocMemory
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