Nanostructures add value to microelectromechanical systems

Microelectromechanical Systems or MEMS started to attract interest in 1980's. During the following decade, commercial breakthroughs in automotive electronics - such as airbag systems and stability control - as well as in ink-jet printing were made. After the turn of the millennium, MEMS has further increased the pace through applications in mobile terminals, and billions of MEMS components are now manufactured yearly. Accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, and silicon microphones are already in smart phones, and timing circuits, antenna tuners, projectors, and new sensors are following. Strong growth is also anticipated in healthcare applications in the near future. Manufacturing of MEMS has not moved to the Far East at the extent as many other high technologies have; several of the key players are American (TI, HP) or European (ST, Bosch). In addition to the high-volume market there is also a growing demand for value-adding devices of only moderate volume requirement. Such devices can be manufactured in innovative environment even if the cost of production might not be the lowest. Highly sophisticated devices, sometimes with nanoscale features (NEMS), are showing up. Finland is a country with a strong MEMS cluster. One of the Finnish MEMS manufacturing companies was recently acquired by Japanese Murata but the design and production of automotive and medical MEMS have remained in Finland. Okmetic is one of the leading producers of MEMS wafers for the whole of the industry. Vaisala manufactures MEMS-based gas sensors and other microsystems. The MEMS/NEMS R&D of VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland can be commercialized through a contract manufacturing company VTT Memsfab Ltd. Examples of practical micro-nanosystems are given.