SINTEF moveMEMS – a standard process for piezoelectric microsystems prototyping

Micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) with integrated piezoelectric thin films (piezoMEMS) have displayed particular versatility in terms of new possible application areas. However, the prototyping costs and needed competence for industries that would like to exploit this new technology can be both unaffordable and hard to establish. The SINTEF moveMEMS process is an open standardized process for fabrication of piezoMEMS. The availability of high-performance PZT (Pb(Zr,Ti)O3) thin-films ready for integration in MEMS processes opens up these new application areas for industry.   Effective long stroke actuation of MEMS structures has been an issue for many years. Indeed, in many optical applications long-stroke/large angle actuation is essential, such as mirrors for FTIR or Fabry-Perot interferometers. PiezoMEMS technology delivers long-stroke actuation at low voltages combined with low power consumption. Stroke lengths of several tens of µm have been demonstrated for piezoelectric MEMS cantilevers at voltages