After five years of work and $49 million in venture capital raised, Cambridge's Sand 9 expects to begin shipping commercial volumes of its micro-electromechanical (MEMS) devices — a substitute for ubiquitous quartz timing devices — in the second half of 2013, CEO Vince Graziani said in an interview.

Sand 9 is seeking to supplant quartz crystal from its near century-long dominance of the market for timing devices, which are found in every electronic device.

The company says its technology is more rugged, uses less power and is more immune to electromagnetic interference than quartz. The technology also does a better job of mimicking the useful properties of quartz than other MEMS previously invented, according to Sand 9.

The company plans to first provide its MEMS devices to communications infrastructure makers — for applications such as ethernet timing, network timing and cellular base station, Graziani said.

Sand 9 then expects to begin targeting its technology for wireless markets in 2014. Mobile devices are susceptible to malfunctions when a device is dropped and the quartz is dislodged, and would see advantages from the company's MEMS, Graziani said.

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