. Micro and Nano Systems (mns)

In recent years, a very large amount of scientific work has been achieved around Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS). Some industrial success stories (accelerometers, gyroscopes and MOEMS) have shown their maturity. MEMS are now starting to take place around us in our everyday life as the microelectronic did 20 years ago. However, a lot of effort is still needed for the integration of ICs and MEMS. Nearly every kind of sensor or actuator has been successfully developed with MEMS technologies whereas a very little work has been done on integration of MEMS devices with complex integrated circuits. An important part of the MNS group research activity is centred on integrated MEMS with the vision of “Systems-On-Chip embedding MEMS” as target. We believe that the future of MEMS is beside millions of transistors in large mixed signal Systems-On-Chip. These integrated MEMS devices will act not only as sensors but also as actuators or electric devices like switches and filters.