Page 14 - An Introduction to Microelectromechanical Systems Engineering

Foreword

According to my best recollection, the acronym for microelectromechanical systems
(MEMS) was officially adopted by a group of about 80 zealots at a crowded meet-
ing in Salt Lake City in 1989 called the Micro Tele-Operated Robotics Workshop. I
was there to present an invited paper that claimed MEMS should be used to fabri-
cate resonant structures for the purposes of timekeeping, and I was privileged to be
part of this group of visionaries for one and a half exciting days. The proceedings
may not be in print any longer. However, I recall that they were given an Institute of
Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) catalog number of 89TH0249-3. Discus-
sion at the workshop about the name of this new field of research raged for over an
hour, and several acronyms were offered, debated, and rejected. When the dust set-
tled, I recall that Professor Roger Howe of the University of California at Berkeley
stood up and announced, “Well, then, the name is MEMS.” In this way, the group
came to consensus. The research they conducted, unique to any currently being con-
ducted in the United States (or the world for that matter) would hereafter be known
as “MEMS.”
In those early, heady, exciting, and terribly uncertain days, many issues faced
those in the nascent field that researchers today would find hard to remember. For
example, our hearty band constantly worried if any scholarly journal would publish
the papers we wrote. Sources of research funding were hard to find and difficult to
maintain. MEMS fabrication was itself a major issue. Topics of conversation were
frequently about the nature, properties, and standardization of the polysilicon that
the pioneering band of researchers was using to demonstrate the early, elementary
structures of the day. Even the most daring and idealistic of students occasionally
turned down the offer to work with the faculty of that era: the work sometimes
appeared too farfetched for the taste of even the green-eyed zealots among the
graduate student population.
In the 10 years since the momentous events of that watershed workshop, the
National Science Foundation (NSF) funded a set of MEMS projects under its
“Emerging Technologies Initiative,” headed at the time by George Hazelrigg. NSF
funding continues to this day. The Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency
(DARPA) put nearly $200 million into MEMS research. Numerous MEMS journals
have sprung up, and the rate of filing of MEMS patents has reached over 160 per
calendar year in 1997. The skeptics that predicted the collapse of the field in 1990
are now confronted with the fact that, in 1997, 80 U.S. were companies in the
MEMS field. The combined total world market of MEMS reached approximately
$2 billion as well. In addition, the most conservative market studies predict a world
MEMS market in excess of $8 billion in 2003. In a phrase, MEMS has arrived.

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