Here's what the companies say about their new alliance: Affinity Biosensors and Innovative Micro Technology, Inc. entered into a strategic foundry partnership today for volume production of suspended mass resonator (SMR) MEMS devices enabling particle measurement in fluidic solutions with femtogram resolution. The SMR MEMS devices are the chips that drive Affinity Biosensors' ARCHIMEDES Particle Measurement System, which won the Gold Award for the Best New Product at Pittcon 2010, and most recently, the 2010 R&D100 Award, recognizing it as one of the most technologically significant new products of the past year. Originally conceived at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, IMT refined and developed a robust process for volume production, including a key component to this product - sub-mTorr vacuum, wafer-level packaging (WLP) technology. ARCHIMEDES measures a particle as it traverses through a microfluidic channel embedded in a resonating cantilever. The mass is determined by detecting the change in resonant frequency at the time the particle enters the tip of the cantilever. Achieving femtogram resolution requires the cantilever to have a very high Q-factor that is only accomplished by encapsulating the cantilever in high-vacuum wafer level packaging (WLP)...
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