Are You Aware of the MEMS Technology? - Part 1

With the growing technical extravaganza the global scenario is changing day by day. Things, which were once thought to be impossible are today available at everybody’s disposal. As we are scaling great heights day by day, the level of integration of the physical and electronic systems is also increasing on a daily basis. The systems are miniaturized to the maximum possible scale.

What is MEMS?

[*]It is micro-electronic-mechanical-systems technology wherein very small mechanical devices are driven by electricity. This system is also called as micromachines in Japan and micro system technology(MST) in Europe.
[*]MEMS are made up of very tiny components whose sizes range from 1 to 100 micrometers. (i.e. 0.001 to 0.1 mm) and the complete device ranges from 20 micrometer to 1 mm.
[*]Mems can be simple in construction or may be having complex electromechanical structure with multiple moving elements.
[*]These movements are controlled by the integrated electronic circuitry.

Materials used for MEMS manufacturing:

1. Silicon: it is readily available, cheap, high quality and ability to incorporate electronic functionality makes it most widely used material for mems.

2. Polymers: the crystalline silicon is a complex and expensive material which makes it difficult to put to use. Hence we can use polymers instead as the can be produced in great volumes with the desired material characteristics.

3. Metals: though these do not show a high level of flexibility as compared to silicon, when used in their ranges show high level of reliability. These can be deposited using electroplating evaporating etc. commonly used metals are gold, silver, nickel, titanium, tungsten, platinum etc.



A MEMS typically has the following functional elements:


1. Miniaturized structures.

2. Sensors.

3. Actuators

4. Microelectronics.

Out of these the sensors and the actuators are most important and interesting. These are known as “transducers” which convert energy from one form to another. In this case the actuators and sensors convert mechanical signals to electrical which are then fed to the microelectronic circuit for processing. I will be elaborating real soon about the functional elements.