The Support Center for Microsystems Education (SCME) is located in Albuquerque, NM at the University of New Mexico’s Manufacturing Training and Technology Center (MTTC). The MTTC’s cleanroom allows students and educators the opportunity to learn how microsystems are fabricated by making a micro pressure sensor. The SCME provides hands-on kits with parts made in the cleanroom and holds multi-day fabrication workshops. The Center also provides online education and materials for downloads for educators and students as well as a YouTube channel with short lectures and animations.
One of the “coolest” images SCME has acquired by a technician student as part of the MEMS Design competition sponsored by Sandia National Laboratories. The chain links are 11 microns, which means it takes 10 links to span a human hair.
SCME recently joined the rain network to offer educators the opportunity to interact with the Phenom Pro scanning electron microscope with EDS capability. We are reaching out to area K-12 partners as well as local microsystems companies to enable a cost effective method of characterization and analysis. In addition to providing the remote access capability, the SCME has developed a metrology mask design and samples for Rain participants. These 1 cm square chips were given out at the recent HI-TEC conference during the Micro Nano Tech special interest group session this last July.
SCME has a variety of MEMS devices that can be explored as part of the remote access activities and plans on acquiring many more to add to the gallery. MEMS are found in almost everything including your smart phone, smart watches, fitness trackers, cars, and the like – they provide your smart devices with the sensors they need to interact with the world. It is predicted that there will be over 1 trillion MEMS sensors connected to the internet of things by 2020!
The Digital Mirror Device (DMD) chip, made by Texas Instruments, are used in projection systems from the large scale systems found in today’s movie theaters, to classroom projectors and even the pico projectors found in cell phones. Depending on the application, there are between 800,000 and 12,000,000 individually addressable mirrors on each chip. The 10-20 micron square individual mirrors can switch on and off thousands of times per second.
