In recent years, the mainland attaches great importance to the development of the smart sensor industry, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has compiled the "Three-year Action Guide for the Smart Sensor Industry (2017~2019)", which has laid the foundation for grasping the strategic opportunity period of deep adjustment of the new generation of information technology and enhancing the core competitiveness of the smart sensor industry.
In 2019, under the guidance of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the China Electronics Standardization Institute carried out a strategic research on the development strategy of smart sensors, and conducted a thorough investigation of the smart sensor industry in the mainland.
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The survey formed the "White Paper on Intelligent Sensor Spectrum System and Development Strategy", which has become one of the important references for the formulation of the strategy of the intelligent sensor industry in mainland China. In the report, 11 technical directions and suggestions for the development of the mainland intelligent sensor industry are proposed, which are also some of the key neck technologies of the mainland sensor, let's take a look at which sensor technologies are highlighted.
Although several years have passed, many of these 11 key technologies still need to be solved for the sensor industry, which is extremely testing technology precipitation and needs to be accumulated! In 2024, what technologies have mainland sensor companies made breakthroughs? Feel free to leave a message in this article to discuss, or communicate in China's largest sensing community: the Sensing Exchange Circle.
1. Intelligent optical fiber sensor
Intelligent optical fiber sensors are mainly used for condition monitoring of aero engines and heavy-duty gas turbines, and real-time measurement of pressure, temperature, vibration, strain, displacement, exhaust composition and other parameters during the working process of the engine, providing data support for the working status, health status and fault analysis of the engine/gas turbine.
We know that optical fiber sensors naturally have the ability to resist electromagnetic and atomic radiation interference, and have many advantages such as high working temperature, multi-sensor networking, signal preprocessing and analysis, and digital universal interface, so intelligent optical fiber sensors play a great role in major engineering equipment.
Known as the crown jewel of the manufacturing industry - engine/gas turbine, the application of intelligent fiber optic sensors is indispensable. International industrial giants – GE, Siemens, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce and others – have already used smart fiber optic sensors for condition monitoring of their engine/gas turbine products.
However, the research of optical fiber intelligent sensors in mainland China started late, and at present, compared with other sensor fields, the attention is not enough, the investment of manpower and material resources is less, and the development level of foreign countries is quite different, and the gap in the field of intelligent optical fiber sensors for ultra-high temperature environments in combustion chambers is particularly obvious.
2. Silicon pressure sensor chip with wide temperature range
Pressure sensors have always been one of the largest types of shipments and use in the field of sensors, especially silicon pressure sensors and chips in a wide temperature zone, which is also the direction of the relatively large gap between the mainland and the world's advanced level.
In terms of specific technical parameters, the high-reliability MEMS high-temperature silicon pressure sensor with a temperature range of -55°C~225°C and an accuracy better than 0.25%FS is the focus of urgent breakthrough.
At the same time, the development of key technologies such as low-stress leadless packaging, temperature compensation, and high-temperature special circuit (ASIC) chips, and the development of measurement and control interface circuits are the key to achieving mass production and application in major technical equipment.
3. Integration and integration of MEMS technology and IC technology
MEMS technology uses microfabrication technology to integrate various products onto silicon-based microelectronic chips, which has many similarities with traditional IC processes, such as lithography, thin film deposition, doping, etching, chemical mechanical polishing, etc., and some complex microstructures are difficult to achieve with IC processes, so microfabrication technologies must be used, such as bulk microfabrication technology of silicon, surface microfabrication technology, etc.
MEMS technology will be the main manufacturing technology for sensors in the future, but the development of domestic MEMS is facing problems such as the lack of high-end R&D personnel, the industrial chain has not yet been formed, and the difficulty of corporate profitability.
MEMS was originally used in automotive airbags, and in recent years, with the development of technology, the market demand has been rapid, and MEMS technology will bring great changes to our lives, just like the changes brought by computer technology and microelectronics technology to people's lives.
4. MEMS gyro chip
MEMS gyroscope is the basic component of the semiconductor industry, which is widely used in consumer electronics, industry and other fields, and the technical threshold is at a high level in the field of sensors.
Europe, the United States and Japan have a number of related enterprises and scientific research units have made breakthroughs in this field, but China started late and developed slowly, and there are only a handful of domestic enterprises with the ability to independently design and mass produce MEMS gyrocopic chips, and the output and market share are very low.
According to the "Blue Book of China's Sensor (Technology and Industry) Development", many domestic consumer electronics manufacturers use a large number of MEMS gyroscope chips basically rely on imports, and it is conservatively estimated that the import rate of MEMS chips is more than 80%.
5. High-performance magnetic sensor
High-performance magnetic sensors have a high technical threshold, a wide market and a wide range of applications, and there is a huge demand in the fields of industrial automation control, medical equipment and the automotive industry, with global sales of more than billions of units and an amount of tens of billions of dollars every year.
Taking traditional fuel vehicles as an example, more than 30 magnetic sensors are installed on average on each vehicle, covering nearly 20 applications such as crankshafts, circuits, pedals, liquid levels, and buckles. In intelligent self-driving cars, the application of these sensors will be more and more detailed.
However, at present, the vehicles sold in the Chinese market are monopolized by foreign manufacturers of magnetic sensors and rely heavily on imports, and foreign manufacturers such as Honeywell, Murata, MEAS, and ROHM have carved up this market.
The high-end magnetic sensors used in industrial control fields such as precision manufacturing, exploration, electric power, and instrumentation are also controlled by international sensor giants, which has buried huge hidden dangers in the process of industrial upgrading and autonomy in the mainland.
The R&D foundation in the field of domestic magnetic sensor manufacturing is very weak, the accumulation of equipment and talents is limited, and the product performance, yield, cost, production process and so on need to be optimized and improved.
At the same time, the domestic market should also support domestic magnetic sensor manufacturers, and cultivate and promote the market of independent products within the industrial chain.
6. MEMS miniature ultrasonic sensor
MEMS micro ultrasonic sensors have a wide range of application scenarios in the field of consumer electronics, such as Xiaomi, OPPO and other mobile phone manufacturers recently launched "bezel-less" mobile phones, in order to stuff the narrow bezel for the screen function of the inductive sensor, MEMS micro ultrasonic sensor is the best mature application method.
The working principle of MEMS micro ultrasonic ranging sensor is the same as that of ordinary sensor sensors, which detects the distance of objects by transmitting and receiving ultrasonic waves, but the size is very small, which is conducive to integration, and has a wide range of use scenarios in smart phones, smart terminals, smart home appliances, smart office equipment, etc.
The volume of MEMS miniature ultrasonic distance sensor is less than 1/10 of the current similar products, and the product needs to meet the requirements of high-temperature mounting process, and there are high technical difficulties in the development of miniature piezoelectric chip processing technology, micro assembly process, (MEMS) process piezoelectric materials, etc.
At present, this technology is mainly monopolized by the Japanese company Murata, and there is no domestic enterprise with design and mass production capabilities.
7. Infrared array sensor
The market demand for infrared sensors is wide, and it is a relatively early field in the domestic sensors, and there are currently medium and large infrared sensors and thermal imager enterprises such as Gaode Infrared, Ruichuang Micro-Nano, Dali Technology, and Sate Infrared. However, in the field of infrared array sensors, there is still a big gap with the advanced level of foreign countries.
Infrared array sensor refers to an infrared sensor that integrates 180 sensitive units from 80×60 to 240 × on the same chip, which can receive and detect the infrared energy radiated by the target object, and output the electrical signal related to the temperature distribution and infrared radiation intensity of the target object after photoelectric conversion.
Compared with the unit infrared sensor that is widely used in daily life, the infrared array sensor has the advantages of high precision, wide detection range, and observable image signal, and has a wide range of application scenarios in the fields of industrial detection, home security, smart home, energy-saving control, medical care, flow counting, gas detection, fire monitoring, consumer electronics, etc., which will replace the unit infrared sensor.
According to statistics from Yole, a well-known market research organization, the market size of infrared array sensors has reached more than $1 billion, and the annual growth rate is as high as more than 50%.
The technology of infrared array sensor is monopolized by European and American manufacturers such as ULIS and FLIR, and there is a big gap between domestic manufacturers in wafer-level packaging technology and signal processing chip technology.
8. Miniaturized integrated gas sensor
At present, there are large and medium-sized enterprises such as Hanwei Technology and Sifang Optoelectronics in the field of gas sensors in China, but most of the products are independent gas sensing components, which are one generation behind the international average level and two generations behind the advanced level in Germany.
At present, the international advanced intelligent gas sensor has been able to integrate gas sensing, signal acquisition, information processing, calibration data storage, temperature compensation and digital interface functions in a small package.
At present, there is still no domestic manufacturer of advanced gas sensors to achieve the technical level, in the research and development of sensitive materials, sensitive material loading technology, integrated signal conditioning acquisition technology, multi-sensor data fusion technology, intelligent gas sensor SIP packaging process, mass sensor batch calibration technology, etc., there is a large gap, which needs to be improved urgently.
9. Integrated intelligent sensors and microsystem modules
The Internet of Things, mobile Internet and artificial intelligence technologies have a strong demand for smart sensors and microsystem modules, and global technology giants have deployed them. Continental has lagged far behind Europe, the United States, Japan and other countries in terms of single sensors, and we are in the same running line as foreign countries in terms of integrated intelligent sensors and microsystem modules.
This is a rare opportunity that the mainland needs to seize and promote the implementation of SESUB (semiconductor substrate embedded
and SiP (System-in-Package) process for the development and industrialization of integrated smart sensors and microsystem modules.
In addition, we develop SiP module products for consumer electronics, automotive electronics, and smart furniture applications such as mobile phones, watches, bracelets, wireless headsets, AR/VR, IoT, IPM (Intelligent Power Module), and TPMS tire pressure monitoring.
10. Sensor network technology
In many scenarios, it is necessary to obtain multiple parameter data to judge the equipment and environment of measurement and control, so that a single sensor is far from meeting the requirements. In multi-sensor applications, the integration of sensors using network technologies such as wired or wireless will be key.
The methods adopted in sensor network technology are: a single node collects data from multiple measurement points through multiple data channels; Collect and process data from multiple single intelligent sensor nodes wirelessly; First, the data of multiple measurement points are collected and processed by wire, and then the nodes processed by wired mode are networked through wireless network technology to process the data for secondary processing.
For example, in automotive applications, wired wiring harnesses have traditionally been used for data transmission, with a total length of nearly 2 km and a maximum of 5 km. On Tesla, the in-vehicle Ethernet chip technology is used to transmit sensor signals, which effectively reduces the length of the wiring harness.
Sensor network technology mainly has difficulties such as network protocol technology, power consumption technology, and wireless radio frequency technology.
11. Sensor intelligent processing algorithm
Like EDA technology, efficient algorithms play an important role in intelligent sensors, which can maximize the performance of the sensor, improve the accuracy of the sensor, and use artificial neural networks, regression algorithms and other computing technologies and data fusion processing methods, which will be widely used in more and more complex detection, and realize the self-calibration function.
In order to make the sensor meet the requirements of specific industry applications, it is necessary to develop new sensor intelligence algorithms and comprehensively process multi-parameter data through data fusion technology. In order to make the power consumption of the sensor lower, it is also necessary to research and develop intelligent control algorithms, sensor sleep algorithms, time synchronization algorithms, etc.
New application scenarios such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and robotics require sensors to be more "intelligent", and these intelligences are often given through algorithms.
epilogue
Although it has been 4 years since the release of this report, sensors are a basic technology industry that needs technology precipitation and accumulation, and the 11 key development directions listed in the report are still weak links in the mainland sensor industry even in 2024.
These 11 key sensor technologies, from the perspective of technical importance and market application, are the most urgent subdivisions in China's sensor field that need to be broken through, and will also have broad needs and application scenarios in the future. At present, the breakthrough of mainland sensor companies is limited, and efforts are still needed!
Part of the information in this article comes from: China Electronics Standardization Institute