Overview of the Keynote Address at the 11th International Micromachine/Nanotech Symposium
Strategies for Further Development of MEMS Industries and Emerging Applications
Hiroyuki Fujita
Professor, Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo
Despite their small production, these MEMS
products require expensive production equipment.
There is also a shortage of high-level designers thatpossess sufficient knowledge related to the MEMS
manufacturing process. However, by utilizing a MEMS
foundry service, customers who possess no such
expensive manufacturing equipment can manufacture
products using the foundry’s expensive equipment andprocessing technologies. As the network of MEMS
foundries grows, it will be possible to obtain a variety
of services at one location.
A lot of time and expense is required for developing
MEMS products, as many design modifications andmuch trial production is necessary for producing anoptimal product. However, with advances in computeraided design, it will be possible to view the final
structure of a MEMS product virtually so that theamount of trial production can be minimized, thereby
greatly reducing the time and costs for development.
Further, all too often manufacturers do not make fulluse of MEMS properties due to an insufficientknowledge of MEMS. However, we hope to resolve thisissue by providing a knowledge database containing
extensive data accumulated by universities andresearch institutes over a twenty-year period, andequipped with an excellent search engine.
In conclusion, we hope to construct a foundry
network, a computer-aided design environment, andan infrastructure facilitating technical transfer fromuniversities and research institutes throughcollaboration among foundry businesses, equipment
and material suppliers, software vendors, researchinstitutes at universities, and government agencies. By
doing so, we are confident that we can accelerate theindustrialization of various applied fields requiring
small numbers of diverse products, as well as theindustrialization of mass-produced products.

MEMS R&D began with pressure sensors in the1970s and by the latter half of the 1990s had spread toapplications in such fields as optics, radio frequency,biotechnology, and µ-TAS. At its current level ofmaturity, MEMS technology for microspaces enables
us to freely create and operate devices at the researchand development level while gradually producing
tangible products. In the future, we plan to expand
R&D on applications in nanospaces and to build an
infrastructure for the MEMS industry by producing
end products with technologies that have been
perfected. At this symposium, we discussed strategies
for vitalizing the MEMS industry by categorizing
MEMS products in terms of their market scale and theamount of added value MEMS gives to the products.
Fig. 1 shows the results of our efforts to categorize
MEMS products. The inkjet printer head is an exampleof a great success because MEMS technology isindispensable for its production and the inkjet printerhead is a mass-produced product. Therefore, theprinter head was positioned in the upper right of thegraph. Accelerometers occupy the bottom right of thegraph since they can be replaced with mechanicalmeans. Digital micromirror devices (DMD) employed inprojectors are now competing fiercely with liquid
crystal devices and are thus positioned in the center ofthe graph. Optical MEMS switches are also productsthat could not be produced without MEMS technology.
However, since they are produced in low quantities,
the switches have been placed in the upper left of thegraph. Hence, MEMS products can be divided into
three categories: (1) mass-produced MEMS products,(2) products unique to MEMS in which the system
functions as a consequence of MEMS, and (3)indispensable MEMS products that could not berealized without MEMS. Products in Fig. 1 above thesolid line are successful products. In the future, we
anticipate the development of such new MEMS
products as tire sensors and such consumer products
as accelerometers and gyroscopes for category (1);products for medical diagnosis including biochips foranalyzing DNA in category (2); and scanning probe
microscopes and devices for manipulating objects at
the atomic/molecular level in category (3).
The success and failure of MEMS products depends
on the market scale and the degree of MEMS addedvalue. One strategy we can draw upon for MEMS
products is mass-production in category (1) aimed atreducing costs, as in the example of semiconductor
chips. However, in addition to mass-produced products,
opportunities for MEMS may lie in key components ofhigh added-value systems in categories (2) and (3).
Therefore, we examined problems and solutions incommercializing product groups for which small
quantities of numerous varieties are inevitably produced.

HighIndispensable MEMS products• Inkjet printer heads
VOASuccesses• Optical switches• Electrophoresis chips• AFM probes
• DMD
• GLV

MEMS added value•

Mass-produced
MEMS products
Products uniqueto MEMS

Effect of establishingan infrastructureFailures••

LowLow

Accelerometers
Pressure sensors

Market scale
VOA : Variable Optical Attenuator
DMD : Digital Micromirror Device
GLV : Grating Light ValveFig. 1 A map of MEMS products

3High