Several decades of MEMS development and commercialisation are now behind us. Importantly, a strong infrastructure of Journals, International Conferences, university programmes, government funding and government research laboratories devoted to MEMS has matured. MEMS devices are all around us in our automobiles, in our medical centres, in computer projectors and printers, and in other everyday appliances. MEMS has become a key technology in our high-tech world.

Furthermore, many of the largest and most important applications of MEMS are still to come. Growing use of MEMS for displays, growing use of inertial measurement systems, increasing penetration into RF and wireless functions, dramatic inroads into fluidics and bioMEMS are all on the horizon. Even fibre optic MEMS components, whose development has recently been postponed, will be important products in the foreseeable future when this market recovers. Recently, the integrated circuit industry has enthusiastically embraced MEMS technologies 1) because of its financial potential and 2) in order to increase utilisation of today s extremely productive wafer fabs.

Despite this proliferation and its encouraging future, one of the crucial technical hurdles to the implementation of MEMS technology remains unaddressed and, effectively, in disarray packaging. Academic institutions largely ignore packaging or apply simplistic approaches. Commercial groups with products maintain a proprietary silence regarding this difficult and challenging problem. Numerous product concepts remain stalled or have failed because suitable and cost-effective packaging could not be achieved. In most MEMS products today, packaging/assembly/testing/trimming are still the most expensive manufacturing operations. Package development and implementation will make or break a MEMS...