MEMS: technology, design, CAD and applications

Summary form only given. Micromachined electro-mechanical systems(MEMS), also called microfabricated systems (MS), have evoked great interest in the scientific and engineering communities. This is primarily due to several advantages that MEMS offer: orders of magnitude smaller size, better performance than other solutions, possibilities for batch fabrication and cost-effective integration with electronics, virtually zero dc power consumption and potentially large reduction in power consumption, etc. The application domains cover microsensors and actuators for physical quantities (MEMS), of which MEMS for automobile and consumer electronics forms a large segment; microfabricated subsystems for communications and computer systems (RF-MEMS and MOMS); and microfabricated systems for chemical assay (microTAS) and for biochemical and biomedical assay (bioMEMS and DNA chips). This tutorial gives an introduction to these exciting developments and the technology and design approaches for the realization of these integrated systems. The tutorial gives an overview of the area, highlights some of the challenges and outlines the scope of the tutorial. It would be followed with an introduction to the design of microsensors, such as the pressure sensor and the accelerometer, that began the MEMS revolution.