Handbook of Silicon Based MEMS Materials and Technologies

Towards Mass Volumes of MEMS Devices

Early Visions

When Kurt E. Petersen wrote his famous review [1] of silicon micromechanics in 1982, there existed already eight companies working in the field. He covered nearly two hundred essential references in his paper. Above all the vision of the applications and opportunities was already well understood. Petersen discussed a very broad set of potential applications with commercial significance, such as, accelerometers, pressure transducers, torsional mirrors, resonant gate transistors, light modulators, resonating beam arrays, inkjet printer heads, and microelectromechanical switches. The research community was already formed: for example, the IEEE Transducers conference was organized already in 1969, ...