Nanusens is a finalist in four categories for 2019 BEEAs

Dr Josep Montanyà, Nanusens CEO, said: “We are delighted to have achieved such great recognition not only for our innovative technology of building MEMS-within-CMOS but also for all the hard work of the design team that is turning this into commercial reality. We are the only company to be shortlisted in four categories which is amazing.”

The problem that Nanusens solves is that the demand for sensors is exceeding the current production capabilities. This is a problem that is getting worse as more and more devices are being designed with a range of sensors to provide awareness and make them smart, with smartphones being one of the leading examples that has helped the sensor market grow to billions of units a year.

The bottleneck is caused by current production methods requiring specialist techniques that makes it hard to ramp up production. Nanusens has developed a way to use the same standard techniques (CMOS) used in the giant production facilities that make most of the world’s electronic chips.

This means that there is no limit to the number of sensor chips that Nanusens can make as they can be made in any of these facilities. Nanusens predicts that it could increase the size of the sensor market from billions of units to trillions of units by solving this production bottleneck.

“The Internet of Things has been forecast to need trillions of sensors,” added Dr Josep Montanyà, “But current sensor production methods cannot support such numbers. We will be able to and at the right price for the market. This will finally enable the IoT to grow as predicted.”

The first target market on this journey is earbuds. These need a number of ultra-small sensors to provide an enhanced user experience. Nanusens’ breakthrough technology enables it to make sensors that are less than a quarter of the size of current designs. This frees up space inside the earbud design for larger batteries for a longer operational life or more sensors for additional features.