S ince the mid-1980s, minimally invasive surgery has evolved with the creation of such devices as 3-mm instruments and miniature probes for percutaneous therapies. However, one must ask, “When does it end? How small is too small?” This fundamental question is the foundation of microelectromechanical systems or MEMS technology. Although images of the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, in which a group ...

2010 WILEY-VCH Verlag Gmb Standard photolithography-based methods for fabricating microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) present several drawbacks including incompatibility with flexible substrates and limitations to wafer-sized device arrays. In addition, it is difficult to translate the favorable economic scaling seen in the capital equipment-intensive microelectronics industry to the manufact...

This chapter serves as a brief introduction to the basic properties of silicon carbide (SiC) and the advantages of using SiC over other semiconductor materials for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Given the excellent and extensive review chapters that follow this one, I have confined this chapter to recent research performed at the University of Edinburgh in the area of SiC microelectrome...

Reliability is a key parameter for the eventual prevalence of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) as either sub-components or as standalone products. Traditionally, micromachined components have been made by separating the micromachined chip design and fabrication processes from the packaging and reliability issues. This “evolutionary” partitioning of microsystems has led to long incubation t...

Surface micromachining is characterized by the fabrication of micromechanical structures from deposited thin films. Originally employed for integrated circuits, films composed of materials such as low-pressure chemical-vapor-deposition polycrystalline silicon, silicon nitride, and silicon dioxides can be sequentially deposited and selectively removed to build or “machine” three-dimensional stru...