The Art and Signs of a Few Good Mechanical Designs in MEMS

Widely spread across and deeply entrenched in many engineering and some science disciplines, Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) is a mature field today. Moving mechanical elements are the distinguishing features of MEMS, which have earned their own place among the ubiquitous microelectronic devices. This is in part due to clever mechanical designs that defined this field. A few good MEMS designs are reviewed in this chapter, and this opportunity is used to highlight the traits (the signs) that make a design good, and also to examine the roles of intuition (the art) and systematic synthesis (the science) in obtaining good designs. Attention is paid to how MEMS designs have overcome the constraints of essentially planar microfabrication and unlikely mechanical materials such as silicon. It is noted that some MEMS designs are borrowed from other disciplines but many have been developed anew to meet the stringent demands on functionality, performance, and microfabrication. Also included here is a perspective on future mechanical designs that the MEMS field needs.