Polymer-MEMS technology for biomedicine and communication

微制造技术始于20世纪50年代初，是一种用于制造微型电子电路的研究，现在已经创造了跨学科研究和开发的新范式。这一点从人类社会中充斥的众多电子产品中显而易见，从便携式个人音乐系统到植入式健康辅助设备，如心脏起搏器和除颤器。尽管集成电子学有了巨大的发展，但分析领域，特别是临床科学领域，仍然属于庞大的仪器和集中的实验室。MEMS技术及其分支，如微流体技术，正在将实验室缩小到单个芯片上，通常称为芯片实验室（Lab-on-a-chip，简称MEMS）技术。目前，MEMS主要使用玻璃基板，这使得该技术昂贵且不容易与电子集成兼容。随着可光图案化聚合物的增加，MEMS的一个新领域已经出现，即聚合物MEMS技术。聚合物-MEMS技术提供了一种独特的新材料混合物，以及将联合收割机MEMS传感器、致动器、光学元件、微流体基元和薄膜电子元件结合在一起的潜力。聚合物还具有优异的生物相容性，使聚合物成为微型临床诊断系统的理想选择。

Microfabrication technology, started as an investigation into creating miniature electronic circuits in early 1950's has now created a new paradigm in interdisciplinary research and development. This is quite evident from the numerous electronic gadgets that pervade human society, ranging from portable personal music systems to implantable health aids such as pacemakers and defibrillators. Despite tremendous growth in integrated electronics, the realm of analysis, particularly in the area of clinical sciences, still belongs to bulky instruments and centralized laboratories. MEMS technology and its offshoots, such as microfluidics, are shrinking the laboratory onto a single chip, popularly termed Lab-on-a-chip (LOC) technology. Currently, LOC primarily uses glass substrates, which makes the technologies expensive and not readily compatible with electronic integration. With the increased availability of photo-patternable polymers, a new area of MEMS has emerged, namely the polymer-MEMS technology. Polymer-MEMS technology offers a unique blend of new materials as well as the potential to combine MEMS sensors, actuators, optical components, microfluidic primitives and thin-film electronic components. Polymers also offer excellent biocompatibility, making polymers an ideal choice for miniature clinical diagnostic systems.