Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology continues to be a bright spot in the global semiconductor industry. The 15th International Conference on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems (Transducers'09) will showcase this technology. The meeting convenes June 21-25, 2009, at the Sheraton Hotel in Denver, Colorado. The MEMS industry event is expected to attract more than 900 attendees.
Transducers, sponsored by the IEEE Electron Devices Society and first held in Boston in 1981, is the oldest technical conference devoted specifically to MEMS technology. The conference meets biannually and rotates among host sites in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. It boasts the largest attendance, largest abstract submissions, and largest international participation of any MEMS event. Transducers ’09 will occur over four days and include short courses, presentations/posters, and exhibitors.
The conference will feature work in MEMS technology of both a fundamental and applied nature. Transducers '09 has continued its tradition of technical excellence in presentations by finalizing the technical program on February 13th through a rigorous review and 2-day selection workshop.
The Transducers ’09 Program Chairman, Professor Martin Schmidt from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and General Chairman, Professor Khalil Najafi from the University of Michigan, are pleased to highlight some of the exciting new research that addresses technology from some topics of current interest to society, including:
• Energy Conservation: research from the Univ. of Michigan, Univ. of Colorado, UC, Berkeley and a short-course will investigate power scavenging to generate energy for electronics from the environment and micro-coolers that will enable more efficient consumption of power in places like server farms. Additional work from IMTEK and Univ. of Freiburg is addressing feedback control of airflow patterns in wings for improved airfoil efficiency.
• Medicine and Healthcare: futuristic topics like telemedicine and teleoperations are becoming possible through a combination of the extension of MEMS technology for motion control and such actuation work as will be displayed by the Univ. of Tokyo for microgrippers or work on advanced endoscopy from the Univ. of Wisconsin. Furthermore, significant in vivo microsystem work is being presented by Univ. of Cincinnati, Univ. of Freiburg, Univ. of British Columbia and others to address intracranial pressure monitoring, blood pressure and O2 concentration monitoring, and in vivo drug delivery among other topics that will ultimately address the needs of healthcare for an aging population.
• Environmental Monitoring and Security: interesting new work from GE will be presented to enable multivariant toxic vapors with RFID technology. MIT, Sandia and others will show work that could enable portable equipment, like portable gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers that would allow remote chemical monitoring. Beyond the sensor topics, a short-course will cover wireless sensors and sensor networks to further enable broad-scale adoption of Microsystems monitoring our environment and our security.
• MEMS Technology Expanding to Other Industries: examples from this meeting in the past have included deep RIE and wafer-scale packaging that are now showing up in other semiconductor fields. This year, Nagoya and Tohoku Univ. will show a technique for “silicon sculpting” that uses surfactants to augment some standard etching processes to create new shapes. BYU will present a method for using carbon nanotube forests to allow high-aspect ratio MEMS (HARMEMS). Delft will discuss a technique for automated alignment for some standard bulk micromachining MEMS technology that could reduce cost by improving production yields. Stanford will exhibit work that uses MEMS atomic force microscopy that can allow advanced material analysis and mapping down to the atomic level. And, IMTEK will present a method for making micro-coils that could be used for energy scavenging or remote power applications. Finally, multiple short-courses will explore such topics as nanomaterials for sensor applications, wafer bonding, and piezoelectric materials.
The final technical program can be viewed at the Transducers ’09 webpage: http://www.transducers09.org/program.html.
“Early-Bird” registration is available through 15 March, which will improve the affordability of the conference. And, an “Early-Bird” corporate patronship rate will be available through the end of March. Opportunities at a 40% discounted rate are available. These, and other details of the conference, are available on the website at: http://www.transducers09.org .
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Transducers ’09 is a must-attend event for anyone in the MEMS field even in a tough economic environment. Specifically, Transducers affords the following opportunities:
• Cutting edge technology: an exciting program with 3 plenary speakers, 12 invited speakers, 216 oral presentations, and 384 poster presentations covering research in key topics of interest, like energy, healthcare, the environment, networking, and security.
• Professional education opportunities through short-courses in neural networks, nanomaterials, MEMS commercialization, micro-energy harvesting, technical abstract and grant writing, wireless sensor networks, optical MEMS, RF MEMS, biosensors, wafer-bonding technology, and piezoelectric materials. Networking with over 900 MEMS professionals, including attendance that typically includes 60% academics and 40% government or industrial attendees. This enables interaction with possible suppliers and development partners, customers, competitors, media, and future employees.
• Sponsorship opportunities: to further enhance the Transducers conference, a program for exhibitors will allow the promotion of goods and services in the MEMS field.
Information on the conference can be found at: http://www.transducers09.org/.
