Why mems technology

With a smaller pixel pitch of 5. The technology can be used with virtually any light source including lamps, LEDs, lasers, and laser phosphors.

Also, the DMD can steer a wide range of light wavelengths including visible, infrared, and ultraviolet wavelengths. Many traditional projectors still use lamps as an illumination source, however a significant market has developed for LED and laser phosphor illuminated systems. These wafers form the memory cell array that will ultimately tell the micromirrors how and when to tilt.

Then the magic happens. Motors, gears, transmissions and other complicated mechanisms can, and do, exist on micro scales. If all one wanted was some device that performed simple mechanical functions but was too small to fully appreciate without a magnifying glass or a microscope, many sensors would do.

One MEMS device example described is a portable toroidal mass spectrometer and another is a wafer-scale fabricated mass spectrometer. Getting small is quite doable now. According to Dr. When I worked for a large healthcare company, we discovered you could replace a manometer—basically a macro-scale pressure sensing device— with a silicon transducer, which are a lot cheaper and more reliable.

A variety of MEMS sensors developed by Bosch Sensortec for use in consumer electronics, safety systems, industrial technology, and logistics. Photo courtesy of Bosch Media Service. Microsensors, such as accelerometers and gyroscopes, detect information from the local environment. Microactuators, such as microvalves and micropumps, perform certain actions based on information they receive.

According to the MNX website, www. When integrated together with microelectronics, these two types of MEMS devices can perform an incredible array of functions. MEMS microsensors gather and measure environmental data, and their electronic components covert this data into an electric signal that is sent to the microactuators. The microactuators respond by moving, pumping, filtering, or regulating their environment depending on their dedicated purpose.

Such technology is truly amazing in that these miniature devices are able to sense, actuate, and control at the micro level, but they generate effects on the macro level—and many times do so much better and more efficiently than their macro-scale counterparts. These days there are a massive number of commercial applications for MEMS stretching across a diverse range of markets, such as automotive, CE, healthcare, defense, construction, aeronautics, and industrial manufacturing.

Additional functional materials can be added to provide various capabilities, such as electrode layers or piezoelectric layers. MEMS design and fabrication involves a series of steps and cycles, which can be summarised into:. In order to interact with the world, MEMS devices can employ various types of transduction mechanisms.

Usually, these are mechanical-to-electrical transducers and vice versa, so that we can control the MEMS devices and their interactions with the mechanical world through interface circuits. Additionally, a number of other types of transducers can also be used to interact with chemical, light, magnetic, RF Radio Frequency and other domains. Conventionally, electrostatic is the most popular transducer in silicon MEMS. This is because no additional specialist material is required and micromachined silicon can be doped to provide conductivity.

By establishing an electric field across a pair of capacitive parallel plates, an electrostatic force can be sustained. When mechanical motion changes the distance between the parallel plates, an electrical signal can be measured across the parallel plates. Alternatively, by applying a dynamic electrical signal, the parallel plate can be actuated. Comb finger designs are very popular amongst MEMS electrostatic transducers in order to maximise the capacitive surface area of the transducer.

In the past decade, piezoelectric transducers are also becoming more popular in MEMS design as fabrication technology for micromachining piezoelectric materials have improved. As the fabrication technology further matures, more functional materials can potentially be integrated with silicon micromachining processes.

MEMS technology is extremely diverse and fertile, both in its expected application areas, as well as in how the devices are designed and manufactured.

Already, MEMS is revolutionizing many product categories by enabling complete systems-on-a-chip to be realized.

Nanotechnology is the ability to manipulate matter at the atomic or molecular level to make something useful at the nano-dimensional scale. Basically, there are two approaches in implementation: the top-down and the bottom-up.

In the top-down approach, devices and structures are made using many of the same techniques as used in MEMS except they are made smaller in size, usually by employing more advanced photolithography and etching methods. The bottom-up approach typically involves deposition, growing, or self-assembly technologies. The advantages of nano-dimensional devices over MEMS involve benefits mostly derived from the scaling laws, which can also present some challenges as well.

An array of sub-micron posts made using top-down nanotechnology fabrication methods. Some experts believe that nanotechnology promises to: a. A colorized image of a scanning-tunneling microscope image of a surface, which is a common imaging technique used in nanotechnology. Although MEMS and Nanotechnology are sometimes cited as separate and distinct technologies, in reality the distinction between the two is not so clear-cut.

In fact, these two technologies are highly dependent on one another. The well-known scanning tunneling-tip microscope STM which is used to detect individual atoms and molecules on the nanometer scale is a MEMS device.