Type | Private |
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Founded | Cambridge, Massachusetts (2007 ) |
Founder | Pritiraj Mohanty, Matt Crowley |
Headquarters | |
Key people |
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Website | www |
Sand 9 is a fabless Micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [1] [2] [3] [4] Sand 9 developed a piezoelectric MEMS resonator to serve as an alternative for quartz timing devices in applications such as smart phones, low-power wireless devices, and communications infrastructure equipment. [5] [6] [7]
Sand 9 was co-founded by Pritiraj Mohanty and Matt Crowley in 2007. [1] Vincent Graziani is the CEO. [4] [8]
Pritiraj Mohanty, a Boston University physicist, and Matt Crowley, former director of Boston University's technology development fund, co-founded Sand 9 in 2007. [1] The company aimed to produce timing products with a better price-to-performance ratio than quartz in core markets. [1]
Sand 9 introduced their first two products, TM061 and TM361, on September 3, 2013. [9] TM061 and TM361 are precision MEMS timing products for the Internet of Things and mobile devices. [9] [10] [11] On November 18, 2013, the TM651 was introduced for communications infrastructure, industrial and military applications. [9] [10] According to EE Times, a trade publication, the TM651 is the first high-precision temperature compensated MEMS oscillator (TCMO) to meet the noise and stability demands of communication, industrial and military applications. [10] [12] TM061 started sampling to lead customers in November and the TM361 in December 2013. [13]
GLOBALFOUNDRIES, a semiconductor foundry, is Sand 9's foundry partner. [4] GLOBALFOUNDRIES produces approximately one thousand 200 mm wafers per month. [4]
Flybridge Capital led Sand 9's series A funding round in 2008. [8] Their Series B funding raised $12 million and was reported in May 2010. [14] In June 2012, Sand 9 raised $23 million in its series C funding round, led by Intel with participation from Vulcan capital [15] and Analog Devices. Ericsson contributed $3 million in September 2012. [8]
Sand 9 developed its piezoelectric MEMS resonator technology as an alternative to quartz timing devices. [16] Sand 9 uses aluminum nitride, a thin film that is deposited using standard semiconductor/MEMS fabrication technology, for the piezoelectric layer. The silicon MEMS products are smaller than comparable quartz devices and currently operate at fundamental frequencies up to 125 MHz. [4] Silicon-based MEMS products can simplify system design, reduce part counts, simplify the supply chain, and improve manufacturing yields when compared to quartz. [4] Sand 9 MEMS products can be co-packaged and overmolded with standard semiconductor ICs to eliminate the need for external timing.
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MEMS is the technology of microscopic devices incorporating both electronic and moving parts. MEMS are made up of components between 1 and 100 micrometres in size, and MEMS devices generally range in size from 20 micrometres to a millimetre, although components arranged in arrays can be more than 1000 mm2. They usually consist of a central unit that processes data and several components that interact with the surroundings.
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Pritiraj Mohanty is a physicist and entrepreneur. He is a professor of physics at Boston University. He is most known for his work on quantum coherence, mesoscopic physics, nanomechanical systems, and nanotechnology with a recent focus on biosensing and nanomechanical computing.