Military sensors specialists at the U.S. Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) in San Diego are looking to microelectronics experts at the Smart System Technology & Commercialization Center in Canandaigua, N.Y., to fabricate micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) for military sensor systems.

Officials of the SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific announced their plans Tuesday to negotiate a sole-source contract with the Smart System Technology & Commercialization Center (STC) to provide MEMS sensor fabrication and diagnostic support for sensors, including starting wafer material and masks necessary to fabricate the devices. STC will handle wafer sizes as large as 150 millimeters in diameter.

SPAWAR will ask STC to fabricate intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) sensors; inertial sensor components; acoustic sensor components; energy-harvesting components; opto-electro-mechanical systems; and-resistive heaters.

Located outside Rochester, N.Y., the 140,000-square-foot STC facility has more than 50,000 square feet of certified cleanroom space with 150-millimeter wafer production, plus a dedicated 8,000-square-foot MEMS and optoelectronic packaging facility. STC resulted from the 20 Sept. merger of the Infotonics Technology Center with the Center of Excellence in Nanoelectronics and Nanotechnology at the College of Nanoscale Science & Engineering (CNSE) in Albany, N.Y.