ABSTRACT
The continuing need for the enhancement of efficacy, safety, and/or functionality for in vivo therapeutics provides immense opportunity for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Motivated by this opportunity, most efforts to date have focused on applications in drug delivery and neuro/muscular prosthetic interfaces. However, the potential for the exploitation of advantageous characteristics, such as miniaturization, massive parallelization, and high-density multifunctional integration, is now driving the exploration of a far broader application space as well. This chapter will begin with a brief overview of the advantageous characteristics of MEMS for medical applications within the context of in vivo therapeutics. The materials and fabrication processes that make up the MEMS “tool kit” will then be introduced, followed by a discussion of the recent progress in selected therapeutic application areas. This will then be followed by a discussion of applications enabled by the recently developed titanium micromachining techniques that provide a means for addressing many of the limitations of conventional silicon-based MEMS. The chapter will then conclude with a brief commentary on the future outlook for these and other applications of MEMS for in vivo therapeutics.
