A quarterly research and development magazine.
Sandia’s determination to do great things with tiny technology has spawned an exciting cross-disciplinary surge of interest, attracting new talent in a number of disciplines, from mechanical engineering to microbiology.
However, progress in developing complex MEMS devices has been slow. The more successful MEMS innovations to date are relatively simple devices like accelerometers for airbag sensors, ink-jet printer heads, and digital mirrors for video projection. In the case of more complex systems with multiple components, problems of reliability begin to appear.
Sandia is speeding up MEMS development by learning more about the unusual nature of micro-engineered mechanisms and devising ways of turning their peculiarities into assets. Advances in modeling and simulation — where nano-scale physical effects can be formulated to describe more general aspects of MEMS systems — are currently generating a high level of enthusiasm.
One of the great revelations of engineering at the micro- and nano-scales is that the microworld is quite, quite different from the world we can see and touch. If we don’t learn to operate in that realm — if engineers don’t learn to think like physicists — then the full potential of MEMS technology will most likely remain beyond our grasp.
Because many of the old assumptions don’t work and the new ones are much more complex, micro-scale engineering is likely to reap great dividends from the growing interest in modeling and simulation, while relying less on conventional problem solving.
“We are moving from the early, relatively unenlightened days of ‘making macro solutions smaller’ to doing things a new way, through micro-scale enabled solutions,” says Art Ratzel, director, Sandia’s Engineering Sciences center. Ratzel authored an article on the state of the art in the March 2007 issue of Mechanical Engineering, flagship magazine of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. One conclusion: “Engineering at the microscale introduces an appreciation of the complex physics at the feature scales of the devices. It demands the appreciation of a ground-up approach to design and problem-solving.”
As a result, emphasis on computerized design support is increasing dramatically, and modern mechanical engineers are becoming software experts. Some are arguing that, since MEMS production is an automated two-month process, model-based design verification should be completed before fabrication begins.