Issue 8.01 | Jan 2000
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|THE MEMS REVOLUTION|
|Hi-Res Retina Displays|
|Terabit Fiber-Optic Switches|
Some of the micromachines constructed at Sandia National Laboratories - a government research facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico - look like the work of an eccentric 19th-century tinkerer. A wealth of rotating gears with hubs ratchet together in delightful complexity - reminiscent of the innards of an antique Swiss timepiece.
One possible application for such a complex gadget is in a lock for nuclear bombs that guards against accidental detonation. But even more impressive than the machines themselves is the pioneering process behind the technology.
MEMS are usually created through techniques that result in two or three layers of structural material. Sandia, however, has patented a five-layer process, and the more layers, the more the potential complexity. Federally funded to the tune of $100 million a year, Sandia's Microsystems Center employs this method to manufacture thousands of prototype MEMS for academic and corporate researchers every year, says Paul McWhorter, the center's deputy director.
Even so, the lab is not equipped to handle mass production. The lack of any large-scale MEMS foundries, many entrepreneurs complain, is one of the factors holding the technology back. It's a classic Catch-22: Since there isn't yet enough market demand for MEMS devices, they can't be manufactured in numbers high enough to bring the price of MEMS chips down to the point where they make economic sense.
That problem, says McWhorter, is about to be solved. Early next year, Sandia will announce an agreement with a major corporation to create a commercial foundry that will license Sandia's five-layer technology. Then, says McWhorter, "you are going to see the logjam really break. A major manufacturing facility will be able to produce these devices in large numbers."
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