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Defense Applications of MEMS

William C.Tang and Abraham P. Lee The infusion of advanced technology into defense systems is accelerating, by necessity, to keep pace with the exponential growth in information accessibility. Critical to national security and global stability, military forces must sustain their technological edge over potential adversaries. It is obvious that such an advantage cannot be maintained by sole reliance on protecting access to high-tech information. At the same time, in the post-Cold War era, military forces must be able to conduct prompt, sustained, and synchronized operations with combinations of forces tailored to specific situations and with access to and the freedom to operate in all domains— space, sea, land, air, and information.* Also, because technological innovation will remain the driving force behind military transformation, investment in defense research and development and the transfer of technology to defense platforms are aggressively increasing. One of the most critical technologies for military applications is microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), which have precisely the broad applicability to strategic domains that modern military operations demand. Information, information processing, and communications networks are at the core of every military activity. Throughout history, military leaders have regarded “information superiority” as a key to victory. Advanced electronics has been one of the key elements in military modernization. However, rapid, accurate, and comprehensive access to information requires an interface between electronics and the physical, chemical, and biological worlds. MEMS-fabricated sensors and actuators are the autonomous portions of this interface.

* As outlined in the document Joint Vision 2020, which projects a plausible global military scenario and U.S. military needs out to the year 2020. The document can be found on the “Joint Vision 2020” Web site at URL www.dtic.mil/ jv2020/index.html (accessed March 2001).

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MEMS fabrication techniques allow ultraminiaturization of mechanical components and their integration with microelectronics, while at the same time improving performance and enabling new capabilities. Integrated, microassembled, multicomponent systems are being developed for applications such as aerodynamic control, signal-processing using electromechanical computation, inertial measurement, and inertial guidance, as well as microfluidic chip technologies used for biological detection, toxin identification, DNA analysis, cellular analysis, drug preparation, and drug delivery (Figure 1). A great variety of materials beyond silicon are available for MEMS devices and, subsequently, for integration of the MEMS devices with electronics. The materials used to interface with biological systems, for example, are often non-silicon, as biocompatibility is a key requirement. For practical reasons, glass or plastics are often used because they allow visual or optical detection of the biological fluids that pass through the microchannels of th