Concluding remarks

MEMS '05 was interesting with a number of fairly high quality papers and talks. Still much work on RF MEMS was shown, even though the hype on these devices has been calming down in recent years and the succes of these technologies on the marketplace remains questionable. Much work in the bio-/chemical field was presented as well; compared to the typical 'moving' MEMS these devices (fluidic devices, sensors of various kinds) appear to be more ready for commercialization. There is now also some 'nano' buzz on MEMS, with a whole session (be it the final one) dedicated to Nano-ElectroMechanical Systems (aka NEMS).
Finally, concerning the conference setting, there were no complaints...
Btw, I do have the conference proceedings, in paper and on CD, so if you want to take a look at them, swing by my office,
Dirk

Nano / NEMS session 2/3/05

-NEMS resonating cantilevers as ultrasensitive mass sensors (TU Denmark)

-UCLA talk on 'artificial molecular machine' - actuator based on Rotaxane (good talk)

Bioanalytical systems session 2/3/05

-Bio-image sensor (Tokyo University)

-Bloodcell separation chip (Stanford)

-Micro-fluidics to steer individual particles (U. Maryland)

-'Digital microfluidics' (a la Duke) paper by UCLA, doing some parylene micromachining

One of the critters roaming around here...

Polymer MEMS session 2/2/05

-Tactile sensor arrrays on flexible substrates (Korea, Samsung); 'artificial skin'
-Cricket inspired 'hair' flow sensor by Mesa
-Very nice microgripper (UCLA), using parylene 'balloon actuators', cool demo's

Physical sensors session 2/2/05

-MEMS Geiger counter (Louisiana)
-Thermal gyroscope paper was converted into poster
-Carnegie-Mellon CMOS+post MEMS acccelerometer claims to be currently limited by mechanical noise (supposedly most sensitive accelero to date); arrays of accelero's give sqrt(n) advantage
-Wafer level packaging paper
-Single chip atomic force microscope (ETH): huge chip, digital processig, analog frontend + MEMS cantilevers equipped with piezoresistors and bimorph heater; 18 nm resolution + nN force (?) - quite impressive!

Poster session 2/2/05

The final poster session's highlights:
-New drop moving technique by creating surface roughness gradients
-Si nanoneedles attaching to proteins, for imaging purposes
-MEMS thermopile DSC calorimeter (not really spectacular though)
-Infotonics / Xerox poster on the Infotonics MOEMS SOI process - ran into Joel Kubby (hi to Eric), now with UC Santa Cruz
-some traveling wave dielectrophoresis papers
-German aSi-based integrated photodiode/fluidic lab-on-a-chip type device

Power MEMS session 2/2/05

-At last! A MEMS laptop cooling technology to safeguard the quality of your procreational capabilities (Tokyo and Kyoto university)
using micro heat pipes (as a replacement for fans), employing oscillating flow to increase cooling efficiency; thermal conductivity about 20x of Cu

-Lodewyk Steyn paper (MIT)
electrostatic traveling wave motor/generator

-Caltech 'liquid rotor' electret generator
harvesting vibrational energy
charge implanted in Teflon films (very stable)
liquid mercury rotor
teflon can be spinned or cutted/pasted, e-beam implantation of charge, PDMS spacer incorporates mercury drop

Sakaue invited talk 2/2/05

Intercontinental political compromise at MEMS usually results in invited speakers equally divided over the continents, so after a speaker from the Americas, one from Europe, it was now Asia's turn.

Sakaue is leading Toshiba's methanol fuel cell (for portable devices) effort

-main challenge: downsizing for cellphones (LiIon can't keep up with requirements)

-methanol: highest combination of energy density/volume and energy density/weight (arguably)

-issues: increasing output V, reducing methanol cross-over, stability output
solutions: lots of material work (nanotech), increasing surface area reaction, membrane technology

-overview of various work out there

-MEMS micropumps and valves

-Toshiba's implementation: prototype of 140cc, 1W output, 20hrs active
by using effective MEMS micropumps, accurate fluidic control, sensors (flow etc)

-fuel cells projected to take over in 2010 from batteries (?)

-Toshiba device to market in 2007 or 2008

-btw: ethanol is much harder (energetically less favorable) to break down in CO2 and H2...

IEEE best paper award

Baltes et al got an IEEE best paper award for a review paper on chemical and bio-sensors (published in 2003, Proceedings of the IEEE). This is an award that is yearly granted, taking into consideration all IEEE publications. So I guess this is a reasonably big deal.

Best paper title

'Fish and chips: single chip silicon MEMS salinity, temperature, pressure and light sensor for use in fisheries research' (Technical University of Denmark)
...with little competition.

Poster sessions 1/31/05 - 2/1/05

Ok, the poster sessions: first, why do conference organizers never ever get that there has to be ample space for poster sessions? Ample space, as in 'enough space such that one doesn't continuously bump into fellow attendees and hereby avoiding that the whole experience becomes a sweaty and smelly mess'. Second, the mini-presentation format (twice or three times, on the hour, the poster presenters were supposed to give a short presentation) does not really work - but that didn't matter in the end.
Poster highlights so far? A large, thin nitride 'spiderweb' containing thermistors for space bolometry (from JPL); high Q inductors from Georgiatech (which are not quite as high Q as Koenraad's) and lots of RF MEMS stuff; a MEMS version, in parylene, of a Bourdon-type pressure sensor (really cool device, application questionable); a MEMS random number generator, cool idea but poor implementation; piezoresistive carbon nanotubes.
The main poster session highlight however was the free tiramisu that was served during tuesday's session.

Some Florida pics, for a change...

Optics session 2/1/05

-3D MEMS 'pop-up' display (Tokyo university): app is '2.5D display'?

-Out of plane actuating mirror (magnetic actuation), including some parylene micromachining (Tokyo university)

-PDMS diffraction grating talk (Michigan)

Berle invited talk 2/1/05

Founder of Varioptic
(liquid - optics)

-liquid lens, electrowetting (due to 'lateral pressure'), ref to Nick Sheridon (!)

-thicker dielectric: stronger effect (counterintuitive), eg 50um Teflon can (easily) be made hydrophilic

-charge injection reason for DC-effect to be transient (sometimes)

-instability created by edge effects at drop

-all kind of engineering tricks needed to stabilize (and center) drop actuation, for variable focal length app

-advantages: large focal range, good optical quality images, 10x faster than mechanical device

-strategic positioning: 1-10mm range devices, portable mobile devices (cellphone cameras - 2005) - with Philips (?); next: liquid optical zoom lens

Pneumatic / jet systems session 1/31/05

-Chapuis talk
2D pneumatic 'conveyer belt' actuator to move small objects around
Local feedback (a la Dave Biegelsen's air jets) needed but not yet implemented

-acoustic equivalent of opamp (Ritsumeikan university)
Interesting device but incomprehensible talk (and even more incomprehensible Q&A)
-ink jet printing talk (Tokyo university):
idea is to combine each nozzle with an optical sensor, lens assembly and actuator (electrostatic comb drive) in order to increase positional accuracy for eg printing on flexed/flexible substrates...
'few micrometers' accuracy claimed? (thin cantilever: how reliable?)
readout speed an issue: custom chip designed

-ink jet printing talk (Korea)
goal: variable volume drop thermal jet printing (claim: changing waveform not giving enough adjustment range)
idea is to use 'digitally controlled' current paths between an electrode setup to change the heating surface area (and hence the generated bubbles and drops)

RF MEMS session 1/31/05

-Piazza talk
Using XeF2 to release micromech resonators
AlN micromachining
Possible to extednd mech resonators up to GHz but these still have fairly low Q
Claim: single chip 'MEMS radio'(or cellphone) feasible

-USC talk
Al/ZnO/Al bulk acoustic resonators on SiO2 beams to get zero TC devices
Uses XeF2 to release structures

-Imec talk on packaging RF MEMS devices (A. Jourdain)
(three levels of packaging)

MEMS 2005 exhibitors

- Many equipment manufacturers and software houses; lots of DRIE

- Many metrology companies

- Some 'foundries' (IMT,...)

- Motorola dual axis tilt sensor + three axis tilt sensor soo to be released
(sensor $25, test board $50)

Self-Assembly and packaging session 1/31/05

Jacobs talk (Assembly/packaging session)

-Alien Tech fluid self-assembly idea ported to MEMS packaging?
-Use of solder / surface tension
-on Kapton

Fang talk

-another 'fluidic' self-assembly method + bonding of chips

Kitching invited talk 1/31/05

MEMS atomic clocks

NIST atomic clock in Boulder = standard

-Apps for MEMS atomic clock:
GPS anti-jam
Fast GPS
Secure wireless
...

Primary standard: 1s error in 1E8 years - cost $1M
Compact atomic clock (eg cellphone base stations): 1s error in 1000 years
Precision best quartz: 1s in 1 year

Funded by DARPA

MEMS version: optical excitation instead of microwaves
Si wafer through etched, glass bonded on top and bottom to make 'atom cage'
ITO heaters
Optical excitation via VCSEL (10 uW)
Drift currently: <1E-10/day (vs 2E-8 originally)
Power budget: 75 mW (most into ITO heater)
Wafer level assembly?
Local oscillator?
Other MEMS atomic clock projects going on (Draper/Sandia, Honeywell, JPL Berkeley, Sarnoff, Rockwell, Colorado)
Use of device for magnetometry (20pT/sqrt(Hz) accuracy - see APL paper)
Wavelenght ref f, Quantum info processing?

-Prospects:
Commercial tech?
1cm3, 50mW, $100??, 1us over 1 day accuracy, 2-4 years

Q&A:
dom noise? =shot noise
T-stability? buffer gases (a tenth of a degree stability), control system in electronics (operating T 80C)
influence of magnetic fields? structure is shielded by mu metal structure

MEMS 2005 Inauguration

MEMS 2005 Miami Beach, FL

Hosts/organizers:
-Gary Fedder (Carnegie Mellon)
-Victor Bright (Boulder, CO)

Invited speakers:
Kitching (NIST)
Berge (Verioptic)
Sakaue (Toshiba)

750 submitted abstracts
216 acccepted (29% acceptance rate)
41 talks
175 posters
strong increase in #submissions over years
Europe: 36
Asia: 72
Americas: 108
Many papers this year in the Biomedical/Chemical area
86% academia, 7% industry, 7% research centers
Participants: 376 Americas, 162 Asia, 104 Europe