Detectors & Imaging

Nanusens raises one million euros to fund CMOS-integrated MEMS sensor technology

Nov. 28, 2018

The round will enable Nanusens to invest in R&D and additional staff as well as accelerate product rollout.

IMAGE: Nanusens is raising funds to refine technology that creates MEMS nanosensors using a standard CMOS process within the same production flow as the rest of the chip production.

Nanotechnology company Nanusens (Barcelona, Spain) has raised more than a million euros (almost $1.13 million dollars) from 786 people via Crowdcube. This is a pre-Series A funding round and will enable to company to invest in R&D and additional staff as well as accelerate product rollout.

Nanusens CEO, Josep Montanyà i Silvestre, explained, "The company's original target for investment was £400,000 and we were swamped by people interested in investing in our novel technology. However, the majority of them were tech-savvy investors from the UK who wanted to invest using the British Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) scheme that incentivises investment in UK companies. In order to qualify for this, we moved the company’s base from Barcelona to the UK. It took a couple of months to have this recognised for EIS so we keep the Crowdcube open until it was formally approved and then investment more than doubled our target."

Until now, sensors had to come off the standard CMOS production line to have the MEMS created on them using different processes. Nanusens multi-patent pending technology enables it to create nano-sensors using a standard CMOS process within the same production flow as the rest of the chip production. This approach dramatically reduces the size and cost of the sensors along with up to 85% reduction in the time to market. Nanusens believes that its technology will revolutionize the sensor market and meet the ever-increasing demand for low cost sensors in smartphones, wearable technology, and IoT devices that has already made sensors a multi-billion dollar industry.

The Nanusens process etches away theInter Metal Dielectric (IMD) through the pad openings in the passivation layer using vapour HF (vHF) to create the nanosensor structures. The holes are then sealed and the chip packaged as necessary. As only a standard CMOS process with minimal post-processing is used, and the sensors can be directly integrated with active circuitry as required, the sensors can potentially have high yields similar to CMOS devices.

SOURCE: Nanusens; http://nanusens.com/over-one-million-euros-raised-in-innovative-pre-series-a-fund-raising-by-nanusens-on-crowdcube/

About the Author

Gail Overton | Senior Editor (2004-2020)

Gail has more than 30 years of engineering, marketing, product management, and editorial experience in the photonics and optical communications industry. Before joining the staff at Laser Focus World in 2004, she held many product management and product marketing roles in the fiber-optics industry, most notably at Hughes (El Segundo, CA), GTE Labs (Waltham, MA), Corning (Corning, NY), Photon Kinetics (Beaverton, OR), and Newport Corporation (Irvine, CA). During her marketing career, Gail published articles in WDM Solutions and Sensors magazine and traveled internationally to conduct product and sales training. Gail received her BS degree in physics, with an emphasis in optics, from San Diego State University in San Diego, CA in May 1986.