Good things, small packages [microelectromechanical systems]

While semiconductor chip manufacturers still suffer from the recent downturn, the future looks a little brighter for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Also called microsystems and micromachines, these devices are found in many diverse applications, such as air bag sensors, ink-jet heads, medical sensors and telecommunication switches. MEMS can be manufactured from a variety of materials using a variety of processes in a variety of steps. For the foundry industries, it creates problems because each process can only be used for one customer. Because of their application-specific nature, MEMS devices often have to be designed using proprietary manufacturing processes that are specific to one manufacturing facility. In this paper, the author examined the surrounding issues in manufacturing MEMS as well as the probable solutions hypothesized by different experts.