editor's blog
Subscribe Now

Why Is Plastic Package News?

A new device available in a plastic package. Big news! Wow, no one has ever done that before, right?

In so many other cases, this might be a reasonable reaction to a press release announcing a new plastic package. Except when the topic is MEMS. You can never take anything for granted with MEMS, it would seem. Least of all packaging.

So why is this news? It was a pressure sensor from STMicroelectronics. And here’s the deal: pressure sensors have to be open to the environment. That’s how they access the pressure, through a hole or port. If you take such a device, with its delicate diaphragm, and you subject it to the plastic molding process –which occurs under high pressure – you’re very likely to damage the pressure sensor itself.

Some folks have apparently addressed this issue by encasing the inner workings with a gel that can absorb the strain – in some cases even covering the sensor, meaning the pressure measurement has to act through the gel.

What ST did was to make a rather substantial change on the sensor die itself: they’ve decoupled the sensing element from the rest of the die, suspending the sense element by silicon springs. The springs handle the molding pressure without interfering with the sensed pressure. (Well, it would seem that the springs would have to be calibrated into the measurement, but they’re not blocking in the way a gel would.)

Rather a lot of work to accommodate something as silly as a simple plastic package. Which, of course, is neither silly nor simple… You can find out more in their announcement.

Leave a Reply

featured blogs
Jul 1, 2025
I don't know which of these videos is better: humans playing games with water pixels or robots playing games....

Libby's Lab

Libby's Lab - Scopes out Littelfuse C&K Aerospace AeroSplice Connectors

Sponsored by Mouser Electronics and Littelfuse

Join Libby and Demo in this episode of “Libby’s Lab” as they explore the Littelfuse C&K Aerospace Aerosplice Connectors, available at Mouser.com! These connectors are ideal for high-reliability easy-to-use wire-to-wire connections in aerospace applications. Keep your circuits charged and your ideas sparking!

Click here for more information

featured paper

Maximize Power Efficiency in Embedded Applications with Agilex™ 5 E-Series FPGAs and SoCs Memory Solutions

Sponsored by Altera

Learn how Altera Agilex™ 5 FPGAs and SoCs deliver up to 1.9× lower system power than Zynq UltraScale+ without sacrificing performance. This white paper dives into real benchmark data, memory interface efficiency, and architectural advantages that make Agilex 5 the smart choice for embedded, vision, and AI edge applications. Optimize for power, performance, and design simplicity.

Click to read more

featured chalk talk

ADI Pressure Sensing Solutions Enable the Future of Industrial Intelligent Edge
The intelligent edge enables greater autonomy, sustainability, connectivity, and security for a variety of electronic designs today. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton and Maurizio Gavardoni from Analog Devices explore how the intelligent edge is driving a transformation in industrial automation, the role that pressure sensing solutions play in IIoT designs and how Analog Devices is reshaping pressure sensor manufacturing with single flow calibration.
Aug 2, 2024
60,271 views