Birck Nanotechnology Center 2001
Friday, September 19, 2008
3:00pm
Seminar PDF

Micro-system technology has been developed over a number of years, with the first coherent vision for this technology being eloquently stated by Dr. Richard Feynman nearlyfifty years ago. Twenty years after Dr. Feynman’s talk, micro-systems remained largely a laboratory curiosity with the bulk ofthe research being performed to develop fabrication processes ad integration techniques to produce useful devices.

Recent years have seen an explosion of products which have been developed to enhance our daily lives in such diverse areas as atomotive, health care, communications, and displays. Micro-system applications encompass a broad spectrum of physics, such as optics, fluidics, radio-frequency devices, etc. This spectrum of applications and smaller size scale make new and coupled physical phenomena available to the engineer to explit. This has necessitated the development multi-physics analysis tools and measurement techniques to provide design information for these devices.

This talk will discuss the historical development of micro-system technology, the products that have been developed and the challenges to development of a reliable product. The newly formed PRISM center at Purdue is uniquely poised to address these issues and impact future development of micro-System technology.