CHAPTER-1 INTRODUCTION Micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) are tiny integrated devices or systems that combine mechanical

and electrical components. This system consists of micro fabricated sensors, activators and other structures that have been in teasingly popular in many areas of science and engineering. They are fabricated using integrated circuit (IC) batch processing techniques and can range from a few micrometers to millimeters. These devices (or systems) have the ability to sense, control and actuate on micro scale, and generate effects on the macro scale. MEMS based sensors are a crucial component in automotive electronics, medical equipments, hard disk drives, computer peripherals, wireless devices a smart portable electronics such as cell phones and PDAS (personal digital assistant system. Major intrinsic advantages of MEMS, as compared with conventional electromechanical systems and sensor, include the following: Miniaturization: As a result of the photolithography process, MEMS systems can have extremely small features and have well- controlled geometric properties. The small size makes it possible to insert micro

electromechanical systems into variety of application that were previously not possible or practical. The common perception is that miniaturization reduce cost by decreasing material consumption and allowing batch fabrication but an important collateral benefit is also in the increase of applicability actually reduce mass and size allow placing the MEMS in places where a traditional system wont have been able to fit finally, this two effects concern to increase the total market of the miniaturized device compare to its costlier and bulkier ancestor.

In the last four decades great progress has been made towards combining MEMS with integrated circuits. Borrowed IC technology MEMS is commonly built on silicon wafer by selectively etching away parts of the wafer or add new structural layers to form the mechanical and electro mechanical device. The field of MEMS has evolved because of that fact that silicon and semiconductors can be used to fabricate not only integrated electronic circuits,but also transducers and other devices by the use of similar lithographic and other microfabrication techniques.These techniques that are used to carry out fabrication of MEMS devices are returned to as micromachining.