These actuators and MEMS will actually bring us close to what Richard P. Feynman had quoted in his talk ‘There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom’ about ‘training an ant to do this’ - The possibility of making movable but extremely tiny machines.
We are already dealing with wearable technology, several of which are already implemented at the consumer level, that are dependent on various sensors for deriving various biometric data and physiological conditions. Also, various commercial or prototypes of MEMS and NEMS are deployed in fields of research or industrial processes while several are in the pipeline currently being tested with the same goal. To cite a practical use case, sensors are largely applied within the workstations and are the only practical means of operating a manufacturing system and tracking its performance continuously. Sensors and control systems comprising of these sensors, MEMS, or NEMS are the requirements for running any automation and monitor the exact output expected from a given input.
Also, concepts of pico-satellites (i.e., satellites smaller than ∼1 dm3) prototyped by Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and nanoships (tiny needle-sized starships up to the range of nanometres) designed by NASA will become reality as the manufacturing materials and processes of MEMS and NEMS advance.
Sensors, actuators, and MEMS will be constituting the real standalone systems and their constituent materials down to their respective chemical bonds and various stress-strain properties like Young’s modulus, yield strength, and ultimate strength shall determine the perfect combination of these materials intertwined to give rise to mechanical systems that will bring several ‘only theoretically possible’ human endeavors to fruition while making the prevalent processes more efficient in terms of energy and cost.
Hence, in the following we shall be discussing all those chemical compounds or materials making up these MEMS and NEMS, how crucial a role each material is playing, and where and how the market for these materials is.
Most of the micromotor designs, given their proportion of size, function on electrostatic fields rather than other macro-objects that use magnetic fields. This makes nanocellular battery and piezoelectric materials, like high-frequency piezoelectric materials ZnO and PZT, a valuable commodity to invest in. These materials of interest will be copper (copper-coated nanowires), nickel and tin (used in alloy form to create anodes in these batteries), polymer compounds like polyethylene (for insulation), polyaniline (making the cathode), aluminium (for connectivity), and of course lithium. Gold and titanium are also involved in the manufacturing of MEMS and NEMS. Also, the most tested and used material in making MEMS is polysilicon. Silicon nitride commonly used in MEMS and microelectronic devices as an insulation material is also considered as a structural material while shape-memory alloy (TiNi) is used in making microvalves. Substrates are also there that are bonded to be etched and micromachined later. Silicon, glass, metal, and polymeric substrates can be bonded together through several processes for the same purpose.
The following table mentions all the materials crucial for the manufacturing of these MEMS and NEMS with their associated companies (Popular names to give an idea).
Table. Chief materials for MEMS and NEMS with probabilities of successful usage in manufacturing.
Investing in companies dealing with extracting, refining, and manufacturing these crucial materials will help them in their endeavors, further propagating the futuristic technological systems of MEMS and NEMS while their usefulness will derive good dividends for the investors.
Also interestingly in gene chips, which are a crucial part of the futuristic technology of DNA coding, uses one novel method of constructing oligonucleotide where probes employ the same lithographic techniques as used to construct MEMS. Specifically, a substrate is coated with a compound that is protected by a photochemically cleavable or photolabile protecting group (e.g., nitroveratryloxy-carbonyl).
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