Polymer-MEMS technology for biomedicine and communication

微加工技术始于20世纪50年代早期对微型电子电路的研究，现在已经在跨学科研究和开发中创造了一个新的范例。这一点从充斥人类社会的众多电子产品中就可以明显看出，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。尽管集成电子学取得了巨大的发展，但分析领域，特别是在临床科学领域，仍然属于笨重的仪器和集中的实验室。MEMS技术及其分支，如微流体，正在将实验室缩小到单个芯片上，通常被称为芯片上的实验室（LOC）技术。目前，LOC主要使用玻璃基板，这使得技术昂贵且不易与电子集成兼容。随着聚合物光谱化技术的不断发展，MEMS的一个新领域即聚合物-MEMS技术应运而生。聚合物-MEMS技术提供了一种独特的新材料混合，以及结合MEMS传感器，执行器，光学元件，微流体原元件和薄膜电子元件的潜力。聚合物还提供了良好的生物相容性，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.