ABSTRACT
Modern technologies found in military, spacecraft, automotive, telecommunications, and biomedical applications highly demand reductions of the manufacturing cost, power consumption, size, and weight of integrated sensors and actuators. The research „eld of microelectromechanical systems (MEMSs) has seen quite a few signi„cant innovations and advancements to meet this demand in the past two decades (Kovacs, 1998; Rebeiz, 2003; Grayson et al., 2004). Historically, MEMS technology has been seen as an offspring of silicon-based integrated circuit (IC) technology, which primarily relies on “top-down” photolithography techniques. In contrast, the technological promises that polymers hold in future micro/nanosystems have recently attracted much attention due to their cost effectiveness, manufacturability, various material properties, and compatibility with biological and chemical systems. A wide variety of polymer-based fabrication techniques, including those based on “bottom-up” self-assembly and soft printing approaches, meet the demand for forming nanometersized structures rapidly and economically, thus driving nanomanufacturing research and nanotechnology. Nanoscale polymer structures, such as nanopatterned polymeric „lms and self-organized
16.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 491 16.2 Polymers in Micro/Nanosystems .......................................................................................... 493
16.2.1 Why Polymers? ......................................................................................................... 493 16.2.2 Polymer MEMS-State of the Art ........................................................................... 494 16.2.3 PDMS Material Properties ....................................................................................... 495
16.3 Polymer/Silicon Hybrid Systems .......................................................................................... 497 16.4 Optical Microdevices with 3-D Elastomeric Structures ....................................................... 497
16.4.1 PDMS-Silicon Hybrid MEMS Actuator ................................................................... 497 16.4.2 SLLOG Process for PDMS-Silicon Hybrid MEMS Fabrication ............................. 498 16.4.3 Hybrid MEMS Technology for Microoptics ............................................................ 503
16.5 Multiscale Integration of Nanoimprinted Elastomeric Structures .......................................504 16.5.1 Multiscale Soft-Lithographic Lift-off and Grafting .................................................505 16.5.2 Demonstration of Strain Tunable Optical Grating MEMS .......................................507 16.5.3 Biophotonics Applications of Strain Tunable Optical Grating MEMS ....................509
