Developments in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS): A manufacturing perspective

This paper presents a discussion of some of the major issues that need to be considered for the successful commercialization of MEMS products. The diversity of MEMS devices and historical reasons have led to scattered developments in the MEMS manufacturing infrastructure. A good manufacturing strategy must include the complete device plan including package as part of the design and process development of the device. In spite of rapid advances in the field of MEMS there are daunting challenges that lie in the areas of MEMS packaging, and reliability testing. CAD tools for MEMS are starting to get more mature but are still limited in their overall performance. MEMS manufacturing is currently at a fragile state of evolution. In spite of all the wonderful possibilities, very few MEMS devices have been commercialized. In our opinion, the. magnitude of the difficulty of fabricating MEMS devices at the manufacturing level is highly underestimated by both the current and emerging MEMS communities. A synopsis of MEMS manufacturing issues is presented here.