セッション3 : MEMS : From Development of Production

The technological development has to perform a very important and difficult task within the next decades: Improving the lifestyle worldwide should be achieved and the consumption of natural resources ought to be reduced at the same time. To meet this challenge, technical systems with high efficiency have to be developed. The important features are: Low consumption of resources and energy, highly efficient operation, dispersed local intelligence, easy disposal, high reliability and low cost. For these systems a large number of small but powerful and cheap sensors, actuators and systems are required. An important method to fabricate MEMS is the application of micromachining technology. This technology has been an R&D topic for more than 20 years. A number of devices have been produced for industrial application, starting with pressure transducers, followed by accelerometers, thermal infrared detectors, inkjet print heads and magnetic read/write heads. At the moment, MEMS are in the state of transition from R&D to production and practical application. Technology investigators and market forecasters expect an important market in the MEMS field in the near future [Mic97, Bry96, Lan98]. The values for the MEMS market in the year 2000 range between US$ 5 and 25 billion. On the average, the expected turnover of MEMS devices amounts to roughly US$ 10 billion in the year 2000. A share of approximately US$ 4 Billion will be related to microsensors. MEMS deliver a core of systems and the market for these systems is forecast to reach roughly US$ 30 billion. A recent analysis presented by F. Kodama predicts a total micromachine market of US$ 35 billion for the year 2015. Key players will be the IT equipment and infrastructure sector (10,5 billion $), automotive (10,4 billion $) and medical -biotech (5,4 billion $). For new, emerging areas (e. g. virtual reality, portable PC's, drug delivery) an optimistic forecast calculates another 23 billion $ [Kod00]. In this paper we would like to discuss the part of a European R&D institution supporting Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in MEMS applications. An increasing number of companies wants to apply MEMS for their products. In which way can an institute support these companies in order to develop new products for a market success? In the first chapter the activities of our institution are shortly reviewed. Then, we would like to discuss the opportunities and the problems of market access for SMEs.