Despite advances, MEMS industry still feels growing pains

摘要

Developed to help resuscitate the human immune system, a biomedical device has 32 motors that enable it to rapidly isolate 200 million to 250 million stem cells. If it works as designed, the device and its massively parallel sorting capability will represent a technological leap in cell sorting that could greatly benefit both chemotherapy patients and victims of radiation exposure. "We believe this switching mechanism is the fastest MEMS on the planet," boasts Monteith Heaton, vice president of marketing and sales for Innovative Micro Technology (IMT), the Santa Barbara, CA-based fab that is partnering on the sorter project. "It goes from 0 to 4 meters per second and back to zero in less than 20 microseconds. It actually accelerates at about 12,000 Gs." Current cell sorters are 20 times slower and—at $400,000 apiece—expensive, emphasizes Michael Shillinger, IMT's vice president of operations.