MEMS is a new technology leveraging the enormous capital investment in the IC fabrication technology. MEMS devices are already emerging as products in both commercial and defense markets such as automotive, aerospace, medical, industrial process control, electronic instrumentation, office equipment, appliances, and telecommunications. The technology uses silicon microfabrication, together with other advanced precision machining technologies, as the main tool to realize various novel designs of micro machines and devices. These systems have both electrical and mechanical components.
Today there are many more fabrication techniques and materials available.
Sensors and actuators are the two main categories of MEMS . Sensors are used to measure parameters of the environment while actuators modify this environment. Micro sensors are interesting because their small physical size allows them to be less intrusive. Micro actuators are useful when small and very precise displacement is needed. Polysilicon Resonator Transducers are an example of a MEMS sensor using a stress controlled thin film polysilicon process, which is a modification of integrated circuit fabrication techniques.