Page 872 - Mechanical Engineers' Handbook (Volume 2)

Mechanical Engineers’ Handbook: Instrumentation, Systems, Controls, and MEMS, Volume 2, Third Edition.

Edited by Myer Kutz

Copyright  2006 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

CHAPTER 21
INTRODUCTION TO
MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS
(MEMS): DESIGN AND APPLICATION
M. E. Zaghloul
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
The George Washington University
Washington, D.C.
1 INTRODUCTION 863 5 EXAMPLES OF MEMS DEVICES
AND THEIR APPLICATIONS 870
2 MICROFABRICATION
PROCEDURES 864 6 CONCLUSIONS 872
3 DESIGN AND SIMULATIONS 866 APPENDIX: BOOKS ON MEMS 873
4 FABRICATION FOUNDRIES 868 REFERENCES 874

1 INTRODUCTION
In general, microelectromechanical systems have features in the micrometer- and, increas-
ingly, nanometer-size range. Often, they are miniaturized systems that combine sensors and
actuators with high-performance embedded processors on a single integrated chip. The word
electromechanical implies the transfer of technology from mechanical to electrical and vice
versa. Those devices embedded in functional systems are some times referred to as micro-
systems. This field is increasingly leading to devices and material systems whose size is on
the order of a nanometer, that is, the size of molecules. Microsystems and nanotechnology
enable the building of very complex systems with high performance at a fraction of the cost
and size of ordinary systems. As such, these systems are the enabling technology for today’s
explosive growth in computer, biomedical, communication, magnetic storage, transportation,
and many other technologies and industries. Microsystems and nanotechnology challenges
range from the deeply intellectual to the explicitly commercial. This field is by its very
nature a link between academic research and commercial applications in the aforementioned
and other disciplines. Indeed, these disciplines span a very broad range of industries that are
at the forefront of current technological growth.
The integration of microelectronics and micromechanics is a historic advance in the
technology of small-scale systems and is very challenging for designers and producers of
MEMS. The addition of micromachined parts to microelectronics opens up a large and very
important parameter space to technological development and exploitation.
The MEMS structures and devices result from the sequence of design, simulation, fab-
rication, packaging, and testing. There are varieties of devices that can be classified as
MEMS. There are passive devices, that is, nonmoving structures. There are devices that
involve sensors and devices that involve actuators, which have micromechanical components.
These are conceptually reciprocal in that sensors respond to the world and provide infor-
863