Device Futures
Biochips, MEM's, Microfluidics, Optics, Lab-on-a-Chip Systems, Microrobotics, and Beyond
Microdevices
Imagine combining the capabilites of a TV, computer and phone
with a car, or perhaps an engine to drive your car that is
organic? The brave new world of microdevices from pacemakers
today to neural biochips embedded into the brain, for giving
memories back is tomorrow.
In work that can
potentially lead to a real-life Dick Tracy watch, researchers
have built a tiny microphone on a silicon chip and have made
significant progress towards building a low-power, single-chip
radio. These would both be important components of a Dick Tracy
watch. Using silicon micromachining, a state-of-the-art approach
for making silicon materials with microscopic features, Peter
Gammel and his colleagues at Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies in New
Jersey built a microphone on a silicon integrated circuit, shown
above. The base has marks with an approximate size of just 100
microns (0.1millimeters).
Dramatic advances in micro-scale fluidics technology have changed the concept of what a "laboratory" is or looks like. What once filled an entire room with complex tubing, valves, glassware, etc., can now be shrunk down to fit on a chip.
Complete "Lab on a Chip"
systems are now being manufactured in which an entire
biochemistry laboratory can be miniaturized into a device about
the size of a credit card. (Orchid Biocomputer)
Extraordinary advances in micro scale fabrication
techniques, materials science, and assembly automation has opened
up a virtual "Pandora's Box" of possibilities.
Extending far beyond just merely creating the next version of
electronic computer or memory chips, integrated microsystems
technologies have accelerated a vast array of applications, such
as biotechnology, medicine, robotics, aerospace,
telecommunications, automotive, and many others. These
technologies are rapidly being transformed in ways that could
hardly be imagined except in the anals of science fiction . . .
only now they have become science, and business fact.
Complex micro-mechanical systems, complete with gears, motors,
and all of the components of an entire machine, are now being
shrunk down to devices small enough to fit into the head of a
pin, and beyond. Here, a maurauding spider mite is getting a
gander on one of the latest micro-device systems being developed
at Sandia National Laboratory. 
(Image courtesy of SNL)Micro-mirror
arrays, originally developed at Texas Instruments, are currently
being applied to next generation display systems, optical
switching components, and a plethora of developments just
beginning to emerge into the military and commercial markets.
(Texas Instruments)
Electron-microscope image of the world's smallest guitar,
based roughly on the design for the Fender Stratocaster, a
popular electric guitar. Its length is 
10 millionths of a
meter-- approximately the size of a red blood cell and about
1/20th the width of a single hu- man hair. Its strings have a
width of about 50 billionths of a meter (the size of approx-
imately 100 atoms). Plucking the tiny strings would produce a
high-pitched sound at the inaudible frequency of ap- proximately
10 megahertz. (Dustin W. Carr and Harold G. Craighead,
Cornell.)
Already in commercial production, electronically programmable biochips offer applications ranging from medical diagnostics devices to biolgical computing. In the background is a silicon wafer fresh off the assembly line, with dozens of complete biochips ready to be cut and packaged for waiting customers.