MicroElectroMechanical Systems in Review

jscribner writes: "Tis the season for tech forecasts and wrap-ups; I got to post this discussion on www.research.ibm.com; it's about how (merely 30 years after Feynman's speech) nanotechnology is finally being applied to chip and storage technologies. The IBM Research article covers RF (Radio Frequency) MEMS, micro-actuator MEMS, and the Millipede project. You can also find some interesting material on IDA's MEMS site and the IEEE/ASME Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems."

SCI-Fi

[digitalunity]

Anyone else read nano-tech sci-fi shorts? I love 'em. Can't get enough.

So, when do I get my assembler?

Better disks vs. cool technology

[d5w]

I thought it was a nice arrangement in the article, having the last two sections of the article be about

1. A cool, novel technology with tiny cantilevered sensor/writer tips over a polymer surface giving amazing data density, and
2. An incremental improvement in magnetic disks giving finer control over the head positioning.

Given the history of storage technologies, what odds does anyone here want to give to the commercial success of Millipede vs. magnetic micro-drives, even in small consumer applications that currently use flash?

Devil's advocate

[ConsigliereDea]

Don't hate me...I love the idea. Once people get them into products (cell phones apparently being one of the first) the applications of MEMS are endless. Maybe a coffee maker that has a working self-start timer? Mine never does. But to quote the article... "The Millipede advantage is not only more data in less space but also a lower cost-per-megabyte for consumers than flash. A 64 megabyte flash media card today costs around $100. A consumer could one day buy a postage-stamp-sized 5-10-gigabyte Millipede for potentially a lower price." How many companies are going to make this cost effective? Of course, the cost will drop eventually to make way for even more advanced technologies, but in the mean time will I be paying an exorbitant cost for something that is more than what I need? Cell phones are one thing, servers & data storage another, but how about how much my mechanic will charge me to replace one of these if they go into a car?

Re:Devil's advocate

[dgou]

Consider the market for "souped up" car chips. At a recent local car show I attended, one of the salesy folks mentioned swapping chips between the Audi TT and the VW Beetle (I'm pretty sure that was the pair, but its been a while), then swapping them back in order to pass inspection. Lots easier for the common bloke to increase the performance of the car instead of having to bore out the cylinders, etc. etc. etc.

The real question will be how stable can such small devices be in the conditions under the typical car hood (vibration is either an issue or a non-issue, probably not a middle ground there). With that little size involved, attacking the problem with hyper redundancy would be feasible. When enough redundant copies fail, pop, on comes the chip-is-brokey idiot light (or just overload meaning for the current "check engine" idiot light).

If you get some kind of assembly noids (nano androids/bots) on the chip, it could actually change itself to tune for your style of use/driving (who said these had to be digital? They could just as easily be analog, with all kinds of funky non-linear response characteristics). He! Everyone could have their own custom chip. Probably enough room on the chip to replicate the control circuity to have a copy for each of the drivers who uses the car on a regly basis.

"Control, control... you must learn control."

millipede

[tantrum]

I only read through the article pretty breifly, and a lot of cool stuff was presented. However, how on earth are they going to be able to rewrite using the millipede thingy?

Applications

[SevenTowers]

We have been able to control individual atoms for a little while now, and this opens up a wide range of interesting domains. The basic principle came from research on the Snell microscope. Electrons have a non nul probability of existing outside of their electronic shell. They have an associated waveform that is made up of a whole number of cycles (1,2,3...) on a given electronic shell. The tunelling microscope detects electrons (with the help of a very thin piece of material positionned above a surface) that "exist" out of their orbit because they are a waveform. This creates a very small displacment of the tip due to magnetic forces, which is then detected by a doppler shift in a laser bouncing on the tip.

The next step is to reverse the process : move the atoms with the help of a very small tip. This allows for the creation of practically anything. From microscopic valves to pistons, to electrical switches and transistors. The most recent techniques use an etching similar to the one used in making CPUs to build these nano circuits and pieces. The precision achieved is fabulous! People are working on ways to deliver medicine to specific areas of the body or make ultra high quality lubricants with these techniques. By having precise release mechanisms and guiding the nanorobots with a magnetic field, it is possible to release medicine on a cancer tumor, instead of everywhere in the body.

The storage mechanisms works on similar grounds, providing a way to move matter in smaller and smaller increments, and due to the nature of the forces involved, in a very precise way too.

Re:Applications

[dgou]

Moving one atom/electron at a time is quite precise, but also very very slow to assemble any quantity of anything interesting. My personal guess is that these devices will first achieve practical application using some kind of massively parallel assembly mechanism that is chemical rather than mechanical. Either vacuum chamber deposition or perhaps some kind of repeated bathings of various soupy mixtures. Having nanobots roam the surface of a chip and create the circuitry is interesting, but potentially slow. Better to have 'em swarm over a finished board/chip and tweak/disable the brokey parts.

"Control, control... You must learn control!"

Feynman's speech

[tsprad]

Um, hasn't it been more like 40 years? Or actually 39? I thought the speech was New Year's Eve 1962.

Re:Feynman's speech

[tsprad]

Oops! Click the link first, dummy. December 29, 1959. 42 years.

Re:Feynman's speech

[jscribner]

Hmm, yah, 42 indeed. It took ~30 years (early 90's) for MEMs to start appearing but it's 42 years (heh, as of tomorrow) since Feynman's speech.

Science: nano-circuits breakthrough of the year

[budGibson]

In this special issue [sciencemag.org] (membership required beyond TOC) Science magazine has named nano-circuits the breakthrough of the year. Nano-circuits should allow circuits several orders of magnitude smaller than what we currently achieve with the best chip technologies today. However, the editors note that commercial fabrication is still along ways off, and we don't even know what a nano-fab plant will look like. The interesting point is that this breakthrough appears to push forward the standard boolean logic design used by current computing machinery. Although quantum computing is not ruled out (I suppose), it is not a pre-requisite.

Feynman

[jpostel]

I have to say that Feynman gets so very little credit in this field. He did not really create the concept of nanotech but he layed out a good theoretical framework around which others based their research. The article is worth a read.

I have several of his books and the collected physics lecture texts. I highly recommend them. I see them as setting a standard for physics texts to follow.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020150064 7

Mesoscopic vs. Nanoscopic

[Doctor K]

The comments I've seen all seem oriented to nanoscopic devices. That technology is still in blue sky phase (lots of potential, but nobody really knows what to do with it and it is still not practical for large scale manufacturing). Mesoscopic MEMs (devices on the order of microns in size instead of angstroms) are already used in commerical products. In fact, chances are, you already own a few and didn't even know it.

Here [physicstoday.org] is an article with some details oriented towards mesoscopic MEMs.

Here [physicstoday.org] is a neat picture of a Mesoscopic MEMs device.

(Bias warning: the supervisor of my research group was co-author of this article.)

Kevin

Nanotech ideas

[webwench_72]

As long as nanotech stays in the blue-sky arena, I think a great place to get a feel for the possibilities of nanotech is Neal Stephenson's book, Diamond Age [amazon.com]. It gets a little loopy towards the end, but I'd still recommend it.

Very inaccurate article at ibm research

[Bram Stolk]

The article at ibm reseach is sheer nonsense.

I quote:

"Cell phone components can't get any more compact using current chip technology"

What a load of bullshit.

Bram

You're right

[MemeRot]

The problem is that they are educated stupid. They can't compute a time cube.

MEMS hard-drive head wrists

[BillX]

Imagine a Beow...nevermind

MEMS not Nano.

[thesupraman]

One mistake I've seen several times here on Slashdot, and often in other media, is that MEMS is related to Nano technology. This is not a fact.

MEMS technology is based on very well understood silicon chip production techniques (with a couple more stages usually :), and produces features of a size usually quite large by todays chip production standards, and not even close to atmoic scale.

Nanotechnology is a VERY different area, targeted at producing operating mechanical systems at close to atmoic scale, with all the associated advantages. This is a whole different can of worms, with almost no relation to MEMS technology.

As a basic exmaple, atmoic assembly is not possibly at a MEMS scale, but is at a Nano technology scale.

MEMS is simply the best we currently do at production levels, this does not mean it's nano scale any more than any previous 'smallest' was. It cannot scale to Nano scale systems, as the problems (and requirements) are not related. MEMS is just very small mechanics/engineering, Nano scale is physics at it's worst.

I personally feel the sooner TRUE Nano is seen for the unique advantages it holds the better, but often the smaller (hmmm...) advantages of MEMS cloud that issue.