MEMS fabrication perspectives from the MIT Microengine Project

Large-scale high power-density power sources, such as jet engines and turbines for electric power generation, are commonplace in engineering, yet no sources of corresponding power-density exist on a smaller scale. The MIT Microengine Project is an effort to address this situation by utilizing micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology to construct a family of microscale devices such as gas turbine engines, microrockets, micropumps, and electrical micromotors and microgenerators that attempt to bring the advantages of macro-scale engines to a more portable scale. Fabrication aspects of the project are discussed in this article, with emphasis on the challenges involved in fabricating complex pieces of microturbomachinery that must sustain combustion pressures and temperatures, high rotational speeds, and be machined to micron tolerances.