The microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) area has been developed extensively during the past three decades. In the 1970s, with the advancement of semiconductor microelectronics processing, researchers investigated wet anisotropic chemical etching processes for forming three dimensional silicon geometries. In the 1980s, researchers adopted the Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (MOS) process to realize ...

Microelectromechanical ~MEMS! gyroscopes have wide-ranging applications including automotive and consumer electronics markets. Among them, complementary metal-oxide semiconductor-compatible MEMS gyroscopes enable integration of signal conditioning circuitry, multiaxis integration, small size, and low cost. This paper reviews various designs and fabrication processes for integrated MEMS gyroscop...

Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) have already revolutionized several industries through miniaturization and cost effective manufacturing capabilities that were never possible before. However, commercially available MEMS products have only scratched the surface of the application areas where MEMS has potential. The complex and highly technical nature of MEMS research and development (R&D)...

-Micro Electro Mechanical Systems will soon usher in a new technological renaissance. Just as ICs brought the pocket calculator, PC, and video games, MEMS will provide a new set of products and markets. Learn about the state of the art, from inertial sensors to microfluidic devices[1]. Over the last few years, considerable effort has gone into the study of the failure mechanisms and reliability...

The ionization degree x(e) (= n(e)/n(H2), with n(e) and n(H2) the electron and H2 number density, respectively) plays a key role in the chemical and dynamical evolution of interstellar clouds. Gas phase ion–molecule reactions are major chemical routes to the formation of interstellar molecules. The time scale for ambipolar diffusion of neutrals across field lines is proportional to the ionizati...

Micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS) have seen a very steep progression in R&D in the 1980s and 1990s, both in academia and industry. The rapid growth has been enabled by new fabrication methods derived from semiconductor integrated circuit manufacturing. These are basically lithography, thin film deposition dry and wet etching, which were tailored for MEMS purposes, since MEMS often uses si...

This paper introduces a new methodology for the fabrication of strain-sensor elements for MEMS and NEMS applications based on the tunneling effect in nano-granular metals. The strain-sensor elements are prepared by the maskless lithography technique of focused electron-beam-induced deposition (FEBID) employing the precursor trimethylmethylcyclopentadienyl platinum [MeCpPt(Me)(3)]. We use a cant...

Polysilicon free-free beam micromechanical resonators based on MEMS technology operating in second and third-mode flexural vibrations have been demonstrated at frequencies as high as 102 MHz with Q’s on the order of 11,500. Via strategic placement of electrodes, and careful determination of the exact support beam attachment locations that minimize anchor loss, these new resonators actually exhi...

Pair plasmas consisting of only positiveand negative-charge particles of equal mass have attracted special attention because they maintain space-time symmetry. A fullerene pair-ion plasma, consisting of positive and negative ions of equal mass (C60 and C60), has been generated and its collective phenomena have been investigated experimentally [1]. In order to investigate more extensive physical...