How Chips Are Using On-Chip MEMS Mirrors for LiDAR

Episode 97 of The Hardware Podcast dives into a surprising trend in chip design: putting tiny MEMS mirrors directly onto silicon to create solid-state LiDAR. Lucas opens with the 2025 market projection of $2.5 billion for automotive LiDAR and explains how on-chip scanning mirrors eliminate bulky rotating assemblies. Luna asks about the manufacturing challenge of aligning mirrors to micron precision, and Lucas details how companies like MicroVision and STMicroelectronics are using wafer-level processing to solve it. They discuss applications beyond cars—drones, robotics, smartphone depth sensing—and the potential for LiDAR to hit sub-$50 per unit by 2028. The conversation stays grounded in engineering trade-offs: mirror size vs. field of view, resonance vs. durability. No hype, just how these millimeter-scale mirrors are bending lasers with the same physics as a macro mirror, but etched in silicon. #MEMS #LiDAR #OnChipMirrors #SolidStateLiDAR #MicroVision #STMicroelectronics #AutomotiveSensors #WaferLevelProcessing #SiliconPhotonics #LaserScanning #DepthSensing #AutonomousVehicles #Drones #Robotics #ChipDesign #Technology #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo