Micro-Electromechanical Systems (MEMS, also known as microsystems - MST) combine electronics with microscale mechanical devices, resulting in microscopic machinery. Our ability to use synthetic means to fabricate materials, devices and systems on the microscale (microtechnology) is well established. MEMS is a branch of microtechnology that has found numerous commercial applications, for instance accelerometers for airbag deployment in automobiles, ink jet printer heads, color projection displays, chemical sensors and scanning probe microscopy. Furthermore, the silicon semiconductor industry has provided numerous methods for fabricating microscale electronic devices. With a little ingenuity, these same fabrication methods can be used to fabricate devices that convert electrical energy into mechanical energy, and vice-versa.

A promising method for enabling us to control matter on the nanoscale is to build small tools and machines that we can use to build even smaller tools and machines until molecular precision is reached and the full potential of nanotechnology can be realized by Nano-Electromechanical Systems (NEMS). NEMS are orders of magnitude smaller and are one of the goals of nanotechnology.

"'Mechanical wear' is not an issue for molecular sized machine parts, not pushed beyond their chemical bond strength. 'Lubricants' are not only unnecessary, but indeed disastrous at this scale - steel balls in a transmission. However, micro and larger machine parts will be utilitized in macro products. Here now are engineering parameters for 'larger' moving diamondoid parts (NTM) [1]"

References:

* Definition from: N. C. MacDonald, Edited by Gregory Timp, Nanotechnology Chapter 3, 'Nanostructures: Micro-Instrumets for Moving Nanometer-Scale Objects' p89-159 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. 1999.

[1] Tahir Cagin, Jianwei Che, Michael N. Gardos, Amir Fijany and William A. Goddard, III, "A material for MEMS and NEMS Applications Simulation and Experiments on Friction and Wear of Diamond" NanoTechnology Magazine June 2000. The Article in PDF Format.

[2] "MEMS Microelectromechanical systems. Generally used to refer to systems that can respond to a stimulus or create physical forces (sensors and actuators) and that have dimensions on the micrometre scale. They are almost exclusively made using the same lithographic techniques that are used to make silicon chips for computing. Miniature accelerometers are the most successful product in this field and are used to trigger air bags in cars. When such systems can be made with nanoscale dimensions they can be classified as NEMS."
CMP-Cientifica