The past few years have witnessed an increasing maturity of the MEMS industry and a rapid introduction of new products addressing applications ranging from biochemical analysis to fiber-optic telecommunications. The market size for MEMS products has doubled in the past 5 years and is projected to grow at this fast rate for the foreseeable future. The corresponding technology has enjoyed a fast pace of development and has rapidly spread to institutions and companies on all inhabited continents. A search of the keyword MEMS in all granted patents in the United States since 1998 returns nearly 4,000 patents and references. Many devices have left universities to go into commercial development, and several have reached the stage of becoming products. It is therefore appropriate to extensively revise the text to incorporate advances in the field, new products, as well as suggestions from the readers.

As we revised the original text and added substantial new material, we strived to retain the style characteristic of an introductory book intended for a broad audience of scientists, engineers, students, and business executives. This revised edition continues to assume that the reader has no prior experience in MEMS technology but does possess an understanding of basic scientific concepts equivalent to first-year college physics and chemistry. The objective remained to introduce a select number of representative demonstrators that are now or are soon to be commercially available. We added many more illustrations and pictures to aid the reader in developing a familiarity with the technology. We also included throughout the text more practical tidbits that are useful to those who wish to apply this technology to their needs.