Fabricating micro-instruments in surface-micromachined polycrystalline silicon

摘要

Smaller, lighter instruments can be fabricated as Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS), having micron scale moving parts packaged together with associated control and measurement electronics. Batch fabrication of these devices will make economical applications such as condition-based machine maintenance and remote sensing. The choice of instrumentation is limited only by the designer's imagination. This paper presents one genre of MEMS fabrication, surface-micromachined polycrystalline silicon (polysilicon). Two currently available but slightly different polysilicon processes are presented. One is the ARPA-sponsored ''Multi-User MEMS ProcesS'' (MUMPS), available commercially through MCNC; the other is the Sandia National Laboratories ''Sandia Ultra-planar Multilevel MEMS Technology'' (SUMMiT). Example components created in both processes will be presented, with an emphasis on actuators, actuator force testing instruments, and incorporating actuators into larger instruments.