13th International Micromachine / Nanotech Symposium- Introducing BEANS as the 3rd Generation of MEMS The 13th International Micromachine / Nanotech Symposium
was held Thursday, July 26, 2007 as one of the events ofMicroNano 2007. The symposium was held in the “Iris” banquet
room at the Tokyo Bay Ariake Washington Hotel. The subtitle ofthis year’s symposium was “MEMS Frontier: Innovative Devices
by Micro and Nano-Bio Fusion Create New Lifestyles.” Thirteen
invited guests – three from the United States, one fromBelgium, one from Italy and eight from Japan – gave
presentations on the latest research and development trends inthe fields of MEMS and nano-bio fusion (environment / energy,comfort / security / safety and health care / welfare). The
symposium was attended by 255 people who also participatedin the spirited discussion.
One of the two keynote lectures, entitled “BEANS: HeteroFunctional Integrated Device Impacting the Society over theNext 20 Years,” was given by Professor Hiroyuki Fujita of theInstitute of Industrial Science at The University of Tokyo.
Professor Fujita discussed Bio Electromechanical Autonomous
Nano Systems (BEANS), devices that represent a fusion ofdifferent fields and are expected to have a revolutionary impact
on society twenty years from now. Third generation MEMS aredefined as MEMS that fuse microtechnology with bio- andnanotechnologies to create devices and systems that willfunction in an autonomous and decentralized manner. In Japan,
it is said that semiconductors are the “rice” (in other words, thecore) of Japanese industry. In contrast, MEMS will be the“beans” of industry, providing it with protein as well as muscle
in the form of sensors and actuators to serve as eyes and ears
and the like. It is for this reason that the acronym BEANS wasadopted.
BEANS will focus market expansion efforts on those fields
that are presently the main markets for MEMS: automobile, IT,

health care, biotechnology, environment, energy, security,safety and so on.
In order to make BEANS a reality, three processes will beessential:
1) Three-dimensional nanostructure formation
2) Biotechnology-fusing processing3) Large-area continuous processing
A FY 2008 budget request for BEANS has been submitted
by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The budget
focuses on the development of manufacturing technologies fornext-generation devices that fuse different fields.
The other keynote lecture, entitled “Bio POETS for
Innovative Healthcare,” was presented by Professor Luke Lee ofthe Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center (BSAC) at the
University of California at Berkeley. BSAC is the center for
MEMS research and development at UC Berkeley. Professor
Lee spoke about the following research and development efforts
aimed at achieving bio-related applications for MEMS:•Cellular Biologic Application Specific Integrated Circuits(BioASICs)(devices in which microfluidic elements, sensors, control
circuits etc. are integrated)•Biologically-inspired Polymeric Opto-Electro Mechanical
Systems (BioPOEMs)(photoregulation, automation and imaging in bio-reactiveelement arrays)•Quantum Nanoplasmonics for In-vivo Molecular Imaging(molecular imaging by means of Surface Enhanced Raman
Scattering [SERS] using nanocrescents)
The 14th Symposium will be held next year, once again aspart of MicroNano 2008.

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