Overview

"Reality has surpassed fantasy. We're like kids in a candy store."

Art Thompson, tactical activity lead of the NASA Mars Exploration Rovers mission after landing on Mars, January 2004.

Packaging is the process, industry, and methods of "packing" microelectromechanical components and systems inside a protective housing. Combining engineering and manufacturing technologies, it converts a micromachined structure or system into a useful assembly that can safely and reliably interact with its surroundings. The definition is broad because each application is unique in its packaging requirements. In the integrated circuit industry, electronic packaging must provide reliable dense interconnections to the multitude of high-frequency electrical signals, as well as extract excessive heat from the chips. By contrast, MEMS packaging must account for a far more complex and diverse set of parameters. It must first protect the micromachined parts in broad-ranging environments; it must also provide interconnects to electrical signals and, in most cases, access to and interaction with the external environment. For example, the packaging of a pressure sensor must ensure that the sensing device is in intimate contact with the pressurized medium yet protected from exposure to any harmful substances in this medium. Moreover, packaging of valves must provide both electrical and fluid interconnects, and packaging of lasers must allow for optical fibers. As a consequence of these diverse requirements, standards for MEMS packaging lack, and designs often remain proprietary to companies. Invariably, the difficulty and failure in adopting standards implies that packaging will remain engineering-resource intensive...