OEM Sensors For The '90's: An Overview Of Enabling Technologies

A number of new OEM sensor technologies have been fully commercialized over the last decade, resulting in a proliferation of new applications. These "enabling" sensor technologies have furthered the development of new products that were heretofore precluded due to the prohibitive costs associated with traditional sensors. Sensor technologies which embrace batch processing techniques possess inherent features including: - high volume production capability - low manufacturing cost - high reliability - rugged item-to-item uniformity - small size. As such, they are becoming the technologies of choice. Not only are they being incorporated into new product design, but they are also replacing their large, costly and less reliable cousins in many applications. This scenario is analogous to digital watch IC technology replacing the standard "Swiss" or handmade watches. This paper will discuss a number of the more significant advanced sensor technologies available to the OEM designer and will provide background on the OEM sensor industry including its size, user needs and requirements.