A CAREER award will address specific problems in Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS). The research component will focus on development of an experimentally verified thermodynamic field formulation for anodic bonding, as it is used in MEMS. The education component will develop a rigorous graduate-level continuum physics curriculum for MEMS design and fabrication. MEMS components are made using material removal methods such as etching, and material addition methods such as vapor deposition, evaporation, sputtering, and electroplating. In addition, MEMS are often joined and packaged using anodic and/or eutectic bonding. Current microfabrication textbooks provide either an overly elementary introduction to these processes or a highly detailed treatment of the non-continuum physics; there is nothing available to cover the middle ground, as planned here. Students will formulate the equations for conservation of mass, energy, and momentum, as well as the second law of thermodynamics for evolving microstructures, including reaction, diffusion, creep, and moving surfaces and lines. The education will be integrated with the research and the analytical models developed will be validated by experiments performed in the 3,000 sq.ft. clean room of the Microfabrication Applications laboratory. ***
