Miniaturization was first conceived for military applications in the 1960s. However, information technology and communications were the first sectors to use the techniques, developed and paid by the military for industrial and consumer products. Without such investments in miniaturization, PCs, mobile phones and the Internet would not have been possible these days.

In forecasting the trend, it is expected that the progress of society will be tightly connected with technological evolution, affecting both the available products and the services offered. The most spectacular results in the progress of miniaturization will probably be seen in the increase of processing power of mainframe computers and PCs [14].

There is an increasing demand to make existing products smaller, producing microcomponents with tolerances in the submicron range. The broad range of industrial applications for micro machined components could be divided in the following fields (see Fig. 2.11):

·         Automotive & transport means;

·         Information technologies (IT) & Telecommunications;

·         Health and biotechnologies;

·         Instrumentation & sensors.

Many of these applications will have a drastic increase in the world market in the upcoming years.

IT and Health/Biotech, with around 60% and 30% respectively of the total, have majority of the market. However, Telecommunication that somewhere between 5% and 7% of the total at present, is showing one of the highest rates of growth, and in the future, it will be one of the main driving forces for micro and especially, nano technologies [14].

Applications in the Automotive and Telecommunication sectors have gained increasing ground during the last few years and their share of the market continues to expand.

Instrumentation, namely sensors, has a high degree of overlap with the other three sectors considered. There are also other rather interesting applications for these miniaturised systems, such as, sensors for environmental control or in domotics that justifies separate treatment.

The situation and trends in the four specified application fields is illustrated in more detail in the following sections. Some of the products listed below have been in the market for quite a substantial length of time, but many did not even exist until recently.

2.11 Principal micromanufacturing industrial application fields.

Previous /  Next