Page 14 - Microsensors, MEMS and Smart Devices - Gardner Varadhan and Awadelkarim

xiv PREFACE

Our aim has been to write a book that serves as a text suitable both for an advanced
undergraduate course and for a master's programme. Some of the material may well be
familiar to students of electrical engineering or electronics. However, our comprehensive
treatment will make it equally familiar to mechanical engineers, physicists, and materials
scientists.
We have provided more than 10 appendices to aid the reader and serve as a source of
reference material. These appendices explain the key abbreviations and terms used in the
book, provide suggestions for further reading, give tables of the properties of materials
important in microsensors and MEMS, and finally provide a list of the web sites of major
journals and active institutions in this field. In addition, this book is aimed to be a valuable
reference text for anyone interested in the field of microsensors and MEMS (whether they
are an engineer, a scientist, or a technologist) and the technical references at the end of
each chapter will enable such readers to trace back the original material.
Finally, much of the material for this book has been taken from short courses prepared
by the authors and presented to students and industrialists in Europe, North America, and
the Far East. Their many valuable comments have helped us to craft this book into its
final form and so we owe them our thanks. The authors are also grateful to many of their
students and colleagues, in particular Professor Vasundara V. Varadan, Dr. K. A. Jose,
Dr. P. Xavier, Mr. S. Gangadharan, Mr. William Suh, and Mr. H. Subramanian for their
valuable contributions.

Julian W. Gardner
Vijay K. Varadan
Osama O. Awadelkarim
September 2001