10A Systems and packaging

Sensors are essential tools for monitoring the environment and controlling processes in public areas, industrial manufacturing, and health care. It is therefore of socio-economic interest to have available the most performing, robust, and error tolerant sensors. We address this requirement in a first line of attack by implementing thousands of identical sensors, so called 'sensor swarms', which inherently can be error tolerant and due to large number effects achieve unsurpassed system stability. The second strategy focuses on the interface between the sensor and its environment, our everyday world. This contact is provided through the so-called 'package' of the sensor.

A thorough understanding of these interfaces will also allow making individual sensors more robust and reliable . The fabrication process of such packaged sensors is called ‘heterogenous integrations’, because different elements and materials are assembled in one package.

A better understanding of the systems architecture and the heterogeneous integration, assembly and packaging technology enables faster developments with less iterations. Hence less energy will be consumed and less waste produced, in other words, the work contributes to a more sustainable economy. With the overarching goal of industrialisation, the programme aims at delivering:

Experimental evidence of the robustness of sensor colonies
Models for describing multi-scale multi-physics interfaces
An assembly and packaging technique, for soft systems
A robust, integrated micro Coriolis flow sensor, controlling a micro-valve
An imbedded gas-sensing system for harsh environments
Packaged self calibrating nano-cantilever sensor system

Back to theme 10: Sensors and actuators

Programme Director:
Prof. dr. Urs Staufer (Delft University of Technology)