Technologies for microdynamic devices

Advances in micromechanics, the construction of mechanical structures using microfabrication techniques, have come swiftly over the past five years as more and more engineers have entered into research on this topic. A major emphasis has been on the development of surface micromechanics a term employed to describe the fabrication, using thin-film-deposited materials, of structures on a plane surface-usually that of a silicon wafer. Rapid progress has been made in research on surface micromechanics because it has concentrated on processes and materials that have been refined to an extraordinary degree to enable the incredibly high performance of today's integrated circuits. Micromechanisms having appreciable complexity have already been built and demonstrated. The dimensions of these mechanisms are generally smaller than 0.1 mm. Rotating micromotors, powered by electrostatic drive, have recently been demonstrated and other actuation techniques show promise for applications to structures that are useful to engineers and scientists. A growing body of research is being directed toward the controlled motion of these tiny structures, a field that has been named microdynamics. Research on mechanical properties of the materials used in surface micromechanics is needed because most such materials have only been characterized electrically. Determining the process dependence of these mechanical properties is an ongoing challenge. Skill in exploiting the special microfabrication techniques developed for integrated circuits can speed evaluation of properties and structural ideas. The results attained thus far have served to arouse considerable interest in researchers from an increasingly widening range of disciplines.