More generally, our rationales for recommending this project derive from the combination of two viewpoints:

• on one hand, the widespreading interest for operation of electronics systems under harsh environment conditions, essentially characterized by extremes in mechanical, thermal and chemical stress.
• on the other hand, the ever growing sensor/transducer market and its continuous extension to all industrial sectors.

Market figures clearly correlate these trends.

Focusing on harsh environments, the actual market for high-temperature electronics (HTE) components in 2002 was $238 M, and is predicted by HITEN to grow to about 400 and 900 millions US $ by 2007 and 2012 respectively, out of which SOI technology will cover 80 to 90%. Automotive and well logging remain the main application sectors, but aerospace shows the fastest-growing trend.

The sensors industry is vast, intensely competitive and fragmented. Concerning the sensors market potential, the non-military world market for sensors exceeded $32.5 billion in 1998 and it is expected to reach $50 billion by 2008 (Copyright 2004, Triad Semiconductor, Inc.). The same research indicates that worldwide revenues for pressure sensors only exceed $1.1 billion, and the combined North American and European market for temperature sensors alone exceeds $1.2 billion.

The sensor/transducer market for monitoring and control in discrete and process manufacturing is forecasted to grow to $23 million by 2007 (Source: On World Research).  According to the same source, revenues for next-generation biological and chemical sensors will increase from to almost $4 billion in 2007 at a compound annual growth rate of 11.5%.

The above figures reference only the sensor component. The developing "machine-to-machine" (M2M) applications require the sensors to be connected to wired or wireless communications networks. The M2M market is estimated to be $100 billion in the US and $400 billion worldwide by 2010 (combining the sensor, processors and electronics interfaces, wireless data communications, networking and software).

Finally, the structure of the MEMS market shows that there is a clear separation into low (Engineering research labs and universities, space, niche applications),  medium volume segment (defense, optical telecoms, medical instrumentation and in-house manufacturing) and high volume production (automotive, IT, RF Telecom).