HOW SMALL CAN WE TAKE THIS? - ART OF MINIATURIZATION

Timeline of MEMS and MEME Timeline of MEMS and MEME Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems Same fabrication techniques used for electrical VLSI Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Equipments

So what are MEMS? Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) ► small integrated devices or systems that combine electrical and mechanical components ► range in size from the sub micrometer (or sub micron) level to the millimeter level, and there can be any number, from a few to millions, in a particular system micrometer ► MEMS extend the fabrication techniques developed for the integrated circuit industry to add mechanical elements such as beams, gears, diaphragms, and springs to devices.

1750sFirst electrostatic motor (Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Gordon) Silicon discovered 1927Field effect transistor patented (Lilienfield) 1947Invention of the transistor (Germanium) at Bell Telephone Laboratories. (23 December) 1948Schockley, Bardeen, and Brattain won the Nobel Prize 1954C.S. Smith., “ Piezoresistive effect in Germanium and Silicon” 1955The IC concept was conceived by several groups, and included RCA's Monolithic Circuit Technique for hybrid circuits Timeline of MEMS Timeline of MEMS

Piezo Pressure Sensors 1958Silicon strain gauges commercially available 1958Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments in 1958, using Ge devices 1959A patent was issued to Kilby A few months later, Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor announced the development of a planar Si IC 1961First silicon pressure sensor demonstrated (Kulite)

Timeline of MEMS Timeline of MEMS

Surface Micromachining 1967Invention of surface micromachining (Nathanson, Resonant Gate Transistor) Sensors and MicroMirror 1970First silicon accelerometer demonstrated (Kulite) 1977First capacitive pressure sensor (Stanford) 1980K.E. Petersen, “ Silicon Torsional Scanning Mirror”

Timeline of MEME Timeline of MEME Side Drive Motor 1982Disposable blood pressure transducer (Foxboro/ICT, Honeywell, $40) 1984First polysilicon MEMS device (Howe, Muller) 1988Rotary electrostatic side drive motors (Fan, Tai, Muller) Electro Comb Drive Actuator 1989Lateral comb drive (Tang, Nguyen, Howe) Commercial Polysilicon Surface Micromachining 1992MCNC starts the Multi User MEMS Process (MUMPs) ADXL and DRIE of SOI 1993First surface micromachined accelerometer sold (ADXL50) 1994XeF2 used for MEMS 1994Bosch process for Deep Reactive Ion Etching is patented

Timeline of MEME Timeline of MEME BioMEMS and Optical MEMS 1995Bio-MEMS comes of age 1998The premiere of Star Wars shown on TI’s Digital Mirror Device 2000Optical fiber switches becomes big business

What is the Next Big MEMS Things? Optical MEMS  Projection displays  Diffractive optics  Optical-fiber switches  Adaptive optics, photonic crystals  Sub-wavelength structures are well suited for implantation in MEMS  This will lower the cost and also add functionality  Promising application areas include  environmental monitoring  biomedicine  security  optical interconnects  surveillance  optical wireless communications

MEMS Patents issued by year Figure 1. Worldwide and U. S. patents on MEMS as a function of year. The total number of patents in this distribution is 861, of which 247 are from the U. S.

Patent Activity

MEMS Folks like bugs?!

First Commercial Product

MEMS – Become Optical ► Reflective metal  Gold  Aluminum

Optical MEMS become Commercial

DLP System

2x2 Optical Switch Cross State Bar State

NxN Optical Link

3D Optical Switch

Agilent Bubble Switch

MEMS Add/Drop

Sensor: Spectrometer on Chip

References ► ► ► 1.html 1.html 1.html ► Manchester University Experimental Transistor Computer 1953 Manchester University Experimental Transistor Computer 1953 Manchester University Experimental Transistor Computer 1953 ► ► Close-up of the Experimental Transistor Computer Close-up of the Experimental Transistor Computer Close-up of the Experimental Transistor Computer ►