Perspectives on MEMS, past and future: the tortuous pathway from bright ideas to real products

There has been no shortage of bright ideas in the area of microsensors, microactuators, and microelectromechanical devices of all sorts. However, the track record on converting those ideas into commercially successful products has seemed uneven to some, both inside and outside the field. It has taken as much as 15 to 20 years (or more) between early research prototypes and full commercialization for such devices as silicon pressure sensors, accelerometers, ion sensors, and optical displays, somewhat less for some of the passive components such as microfluidic cells for biological application. This paper looks back to the gathering at the Materials Research Society in Boston in 1981 out of which the sequence of Transducers conferences was born, illustrates how far the field has progressed since, and then examines some of the real hurdles that must be overcome during the process of creating products from ideas.