A generic term to describe micron scale electrical/mechanical devices.
generic term to describe micron scale electrical/mechanical devices. [ZY] See The beauty of MEMS: Simpler, more reliable, cheaper, and cool for a description and examples of use.
A technology that combines computers with micro-scale sensors, actuators, valves, gears, and mirrors embedded in semiconductor chips.
MEMS is at the present time the closest we have come to fully working nano devices. They are as yet still in the micrometer scale but a large amount of research is going into size reduction down into the nanometer scale in a top down approach. More details on this field are available at the MEMS clearinghouse.
Tiny machines, typically built onto computer chips, that are measured in micrometers. A micrometer is about 1/75th the width of a human hair. MEMS are typically built via photolithography, the same "etching with light" technique used to make computer chips.
Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) is the technology of the very small, and merges at the nanoscale into "Nanoelectromechanical" Systems (NEMS) and Nanotechnology.
