Diatoms and MEMS

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

Dear Dick,

Thanks for your wonderful lecture yesterday. It was amazing.

A small comment.

When you say that the MEMS technology is linear in growth, it is not
quite right.

First, there is a huge activation barrier. The cost to produce a single
device is comparable with that for say ten thousands. For example when
they made the guitar, they could make thousands of them as well, it is
almost no difference from production costs. The reason here is the mask
- it is very very expensive.

Second, if you look at the short MEMS history, you will observe the
exponential growth as well. Well, this happens because of the
capitalism, if one finds a new lucrative market, then it is hard
(actually impossible) to hold it for herself exclusively.

Best wishes,

Evgenii

[Richard Gordon]

Thursday, June 10, 2010 5:58 AM from Winnipeg
Dear Evgenii,
What I meant is that the number of a particular MEMS
(Micro-electro-mechanical system) item that one can build is
proportional to the time spent, of course, after an initial setup
time. That is what makes MEMS linear. The number of different kinds of
things built can rise exponentially, with investment, but that is a
different (economic) concept. The word “growth” is ambiguous, and I
should choose my words more precisely. Thanks.
Yours, -Dick

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Dr. Richard Gordon, Professor, Radiology, University of Manitoba
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[Evgenii Rudnyi]

Dear Dick,

Well, when you compare diatoms and MEMS presumably you mean something
from the viewpoint of technology. In this respect, it make sense to
compare production cost, profit, etc.

By the way, if you mean separate 3D structures, you may want to compare
diatoms with LIGA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGA

Here there is also the activation barrier as in the MEMS case but this
from the final product view is closer to diatom shells. The problem here
is that one needs assemble a device and at the microscale this is a
tricky problem. With the normal MEMS process usually one obtains a whole
device at once sometimes even with electronics.

Evgenii

on 10.06.2010 13:04 Richard Gordon said the following:

> Thursday, June 10, 2010 5:58 AM from Winnipeg Dear Evgenii, What I
> meant is that the number of a particular MEMS
> (Micro-electro-mechanical system) item that one can build is
> proportional to the time spent, of course, after an initial setup
> time. That is what makes MEMS linear. The number of different kinds
> of things built can rise exponentially, with investment, but that is

> a different (economic) concept. The word �growth� is ambiguous, and I

[Richard Gordon]

Thursday, June 10, 2010 1:17 PM from Winnipeg
Dear Evgenii,
LIGA was new to me, but mass production is still not by exponential growth.

But I’m well aware that despite considerable activity there are no
commercial diatom nano products yet:

Gordon, R. (2010). Diatoms and nanotechnology: early history and
imagined future as seen through patents [Invited]. In: The Diatoms:
Applications for the Environmental and Earth Sciences. Eds.: J.P. Smol
& E.F. Stoermer. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 2nd: 585-602.

Yours, -Dick

On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi <use...@rudnyi.ru> wrote:
> Dear Dick,
>

> Well, when you compare diatoms and MEMS presumably you mean something
> from the viewpoint of technology. In this respect, it make sense to
> compare production cost, profit, etc.
>
> By the way, if you mean separate 3D structures, you may want to compare
> diatoms with LIGA
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIGA
>
> Here there is also the activation barrier as in the MEMS case but this
> from the final product view is closer to diatom shells. The problem here
> is that one needs assemble a device and at the microscale this is a
> tricky problem. With the normal MEMS process usually one obtains a whole
> device at once sometimes even with electronics.
>
> Evgenii
>
>
> on 10.06.2010 13:04 Richard Gordon said the following:
>>
>> Thursday, June 10, 2010 5:58 AM from Winnipeg Dear Evgenii, What I
>> meant is that the number of a particular MEMS (Micro-electro-mechanical
>> system) item that one can build is proportional to the time spent, of
>> course, after an initial setup time. That is what makes MEMS linear. The
>> number of different kinds
>> of things built can rise exponentially, with investment, but that is

>> a different (economic) concept. The word “growth” is ambiguous, and I

--