Keynote address: Environmental friendly polymer MEMS technology

A sustainable and environmental friendly polymer MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) fabrication technology has been developed using thermal imprinting and polishing process. MEMS structures with minimum size of 2µm and maximum aspect ratio of 15 were formed by the polymer MEMS fabrication technology. In this paper, PMMA (Polymethyl methacrylate) which has several advantages such as lower fabrication cost, more flexible, softer, transparency and biocompatible, etc., was used for MEMS actuators and a sensor utilizing small Young's modulus and large thermal expansion coefficient. As the demonstration of the proposed polymer MEMS fabrication technology, comb drive electrostatic micro actuators, electrothermal micro actuators and a capacitive micro accelerometer were fabricated and characterized. For the reliability evaluation of the polymer MEMS, the fatigue testing of micro-sized PMMA structures have been carried out. It was able to obtain a fatigue life 1.0×107 cycles under 92MPa bending stress. The proposal polymer MEMS process has been confirmed it is promising as a sustainable MEMS production technology.