https://www.theedgemarkets.com/article/cover-story-building-nextgeneration-sensors

News filtered out less than a month ago that Dagang NeXchange (DNeX) Bhd had won the bid to acquire semiconductor wafer foundry, SilTerra Malaysia Sdn Bhd, from Khazanah Nasional Bhd. However, the foundry is not letting a change in shareholding affect its plans to capitalise on technology trends and play to its strengths. 

One of its areas of focus now is the manufacture of sensors, which has seen an upswing in demand with the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT), autonomous vehicles and digital health solutions. All these technologies require sensors to collect data from the environment and react to external conditions.

SilTerra senior vice-president of technology development Arjun Kantimahanti points out that there are many different types of sensors available today — chemical sensors, biosensors and mechanical sensors.

Some of these, however, leave much to be desired. “They typically consume a lot of power, so you cannot run them on batteries, and they are bulky and thus difficult to incorporate into anything mobile,” he says.