Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems (IMM) Bologna
The Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems (IMM) of the Italian National Council of Research (CNR) is a no-profit public research organization and owns in Bologna the largest public silicon micro fabrication facility existing in Italy, equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentations for MEMS processing, including UV lithography, front/backside mask alignment, plasma etching of metallic and dielectric thin films, Deep Reactive Ion Etching of silicon and SiO2, thin film deposition, wafer bonding, dicing and wire bonding. During the last few years, the MEMS group working at IMM in Bologna has been developing and investigating various innovative devices obtained by micro-fabrication technology such as thermal MEMS for chemical gas sensing, Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPAD) for ultra-sensitive light detection, silicon micro-fluidic devices (for both gases and liquids) for industrial automation and miniaturized gas chromatography, silicon MEMS resonators for strain sensing.
The development of miniaturized gas-chromatographic systems based on micro-machined components, including pre-concentration cartridges, separation columns and solid state detectors for indoor or outdoor air quality assessment, agro-food as well as safety&security applications, is one of the core activities of IMM Bologna Unit, and has been awarded at the IEEE Sensors 2006 and 2007 conferences.
