What are MEMS – and how they change your world: from computers to speakers
In modern computing and electronics, the transistor tends to get the credit – and rightly so.
It is the foundational switch of the digital age which every processor, memory chip, and digital system ultimately depends on.
But running alongside it, built from the same silicon, is a parallel technology with far less attention, but follows the same logic: if you can carve a transistor into silicon, you can carve anything.
That field is Microelectromechanical Systems – MEMS.
Silicon as a mechanical material
The defining mindset shift regarding silicon’s capabilities came in 1982, when Kurt Petersen published "Silicon as a Mechanical Material" – until this point, silicon had been treated almost exclusively as an electric material. Petersen’s idea was deceptively simple: the same photolithographic processes used to manufacture transistors can also be used to produce microscopic mechanical structures that flex, pump, resonate, and deflect.
This shift created a new category: MEMS....
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