Today we have commercial MEMS and Nano solutions that are increasingly expected to provide more value as they replace traditional solutions. Whether it is Nanotubes based computers or MEMS devices that sense, think, act, communicate and/or navigate them are running into both technological nay-sayers and the resistance that is experienced by any product requiring end-user behavioral change. MEMS and Nano devices today are acting more and more to revolutionize the markets and industries in which they find applications. These technologies have passed through many of the steps and the time required of a technology base to emerge as an industrial base.  Order form

Structure of the International Micro-Nano Roadmap

The 1st Edition of the IMN Roadmap was organized in three sections with fifteen chapters. The 2nd Edition Roadmap has a further six new chapters and two updated chapters from the 1st Edition. The Cd-ROM version of the IMN Roadmap contains both 1st and 2nd Editions. The sections and chapters are structured as follows:

New 2nd Edition Chapters

1. New Introduction
2. RF MEMS
3. Nanotechnology
4. MEMS Patent Analysis
5. Process and Equipment for MST
6. Equipment and Tooling for MNT
    

Updated Chapters include:

1. Status and Future of Microsystems / MEMS Foundries
2. Packaging and Assembly
   

1st Edition Chapters Included:

Section One:

1. Introduction
2. Commercialization
3. Optical Microsystems
4. BioMEMS
5. Market Forecasting

Section Two:

1. IC Compatible Manufacturing
2. Non-IC Compatible Manufacturing
3. Simulation, Modeling and Design
4. Reliability, Testing and Metrology
5. Packaging & Assembly

Section Three:

1. Microsystems Foundry

1. Cost Models
2. Standards
3. Integration
4. Glossary
   

Major Findings

Our contributors have provided many salient conclusions throughout our chapters. Some of the roadmap information supports the current Micros and Nano technologies as the economic engine that could drive the next "big commercial opportunity". Others identify bottlenecks and roadblocks. The nature of a roadmap is that all chapters are interdependent and many of the major findings are voiced in differing ways across the body of the work. We provide new findings from our new and revised chapters in section 4.

1. There is a longer history than commonly thought of products based on Nano technology
2. There are exceptional ways to categorize nanotechnologies that make commercial success
3. We provide a timeline to atomically precise manufacture Nano technology
4. RF MEMS is near commercial breakthrough on many arenas and we provide a timeline and a roadmap.
5. There is a rich and core patent history in Micro and Nano technologies that include "core" patents
6. There is an imitation of a standard MEMS tool set
7. The MEMS industry is in an era of fermentation and we have provided an analysis of the existing foundry base

We specifically highlight fifteen major conclusions our contributors have made in from our first roadmap effort:

1. Our contributors see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the Microsystems industry in excess of 20% through 2010. Estimates of a CAGR of less than 20% cited by numerous studies are conservative.
2. Differing technology manufacturing paradigms in Microsystems are becoming increasingly competitive with each other, rather than only complimentary.
3. Application spaces have started to self-select dominant front-end technology pathways.
4. The costs of firms switching front-end manufacturing is rising fast and will continue to do so.
5. The trend to add functionality to Microsystems devices is inducing the development of Microsystems-based products which Sense, Think, Act, Communicate, Self Power, and Navigate, or subsets thereof, to provide uniquely useful commercial solutions.
6. There is increasing potential competition between subsets of MEMS device types.
7. Microsystems will continue to grow in traditional markets, but the real fuel for a high CAGR lies in emerging markets, such as Micro fluidics, BioMEMS, RFMEMS, Micro-power, and Security-Defense.
8. Because there are very few existing Microsystems standards, over the next decade as applications mature, standardization across all phases of Microsystems manufacturing will be necessary for continued growth.
9. Basic efforts in reliability and understanding micro-scale failure mechanisms are imperative for continued growth over the next decade.
10. Packaging is emerging from a unique application-dependant process and accelerating toward more semi-custom efforts.
11. The trend in Microsystems foundries is fluxing with a dramatic increase in the number of foundries since 2000 as semiconductor foundries seek to use excess capacity by adding MST foundry work, but also indicating a shakeout in the number of foundries is also on the horizon.
12. There is a shift in BioMEMS from only actuators or sensors toward in- vitro and in-vivo devices that increasingly Sense, Think, Act, Self-power, Navigate, and Communicate.
13. A robust test process and functional test and reliability have historically gone hand in hand in MEMS-based device commercialization and the future appears to follow this trend.
14. More accurate and interdependent toolsets are emerging in MEMS design, modeling and simulation which are increasingly able to simulate yield and performance parameters on MEMS structures and systems.
15. Our glossary points to the fractional nature of Microsystems, but also serves as a starting point for a unified "dictionary" for the industry.

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