MEM Device Design

The technology innovations that made it possible to put millions of transistors on a square centimeter of silicon are also being used to combine circuitry with micromachined mechanical parts. These MEM devices are used in products such as portable computer projectors, which use an integrated circuit with millions of separately tiltable mirrors, and automobile air-bag deployment systems, which use finger-nail-sized single-chip micromechanical accelerometers. A variety of microfluidic valves, pumps, mixers and single-cell capture platforms are under development for use in single-chip biological and chemical analysis systems that may be incorporated into research instruments, point-of-care medical diagnosis or pocket-sized chemical agent detectors. Researchers rely on computer simulations to efficiently investigate new ideas and design alternatives, but such simulations can be extremely expensive because of the complexity of MEM devices. We have developed fast 3-D electrostatic and fluid solvers, and are currently working on combining these fast solvers with approaches for tracking cell motion in fluids.