9702875 Kim Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) is an enabling technology, opening a new scientific frontier. A fundamental issue is that the conventional engineering science is not always valid at the micrometer scale. Since human experience and our educated knowledge may defy proper engineering in microscale, it is important to lead students to re-construct their body of knowledge and form a discipline of its own for microengineering. It is my goal in academia to establish a systematic and effective structure for MEMS education in mechanical engineering. The effect, I believe, is advancement of mechanical engineering areas by taking advantage of MEMS technologies and also enrichment of MEMS research with more balanced expertise available. To reach this goal, we are establishing a Ph.D. major field in our Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of UCLA. The research plan is to use micron-sized liquid-metal droplet as another building block for MEMS. It has been shown in my lab that an array of metal droplets on the order of micrometers can be formed at desired locations on substrate. With its unique properties, liquid metals can open new possibilities for MEMS devices. Mercury and low-melting-temperature metal alloys are being considered. The proposal is directed towards the development of Large-Scale Integrated Relay (LSIR), which has both the functional superiority of microrelays and the large-scale integration of semiconductor transistors. Based on the droplet-based relay cell, which has dramatically simple configuration and small foot area, an LSIR chip is expected to contain 10 K to 1 M calls of bistable relay on it. A high performance, low density LSIR will be developed for signal multiplexing and a high density device for non-volatile, radiation-hard memory to be integrated with CMOS chips. The scale effects and surface physics studied in the MEMS courses described in the education plan will play a critical role in understanding the behavior of the droplets. It is an objective of the proposal that the information obtained from the research, such as microscale phenomena of droplets and fabrication techniques, be incorporated into MEMS courses. ***
