The Micro Revolution
We live in both a macro and a micro world.
When I look through a telescope, I’m viewing the macro world of distant planets and stars many times larger than our relatively small planet. The further out I look, the smaller we seem. When I look through an electron microscope, I’m viewing the micro world of molecules and individual atoms. It has always fascinated me that both the macro world of the ultra large and the micro world of the ultra small have so many similarities.
In this article, I would like us to turn our attention to the micro world of the ultra small. Why? Because there is a micro revolution brewing that will cause yet another revolution, changing how we live, work and play.
Way back in 1983, I identified twenty core technologies that would give birth to many new tools and create multiple revolutions for decades to come. One of the core technologies was micromechanics.
Micromechines involve the designing and building of tiny mechanisms, such as valves, accelerometers, pressure and force sensors, and surgical tools. Micromachines can be etched in batches on silicon wafers and then sliced into separate chips. They can be linked up with microelectronic circuits and used for applications such as monitoring pollution, aiding medical research, and giving robots a sense of touch.
This was the way I first described micromachines, and the revolution they will cause is just now starting to unfold.
In the 1990s, we began to refer to this category of technology as Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, or MEMS. You might be thinking – how could this obscure area of science cause a revolution?
Think of it this way. Picture in you mind a machine, with gears turning and parts spinning. Now, shrink it down in your mind, smaller and smaller, until the tiny machine is so small that you can barely see it. The gears in your visual image are now about the size of a grain of pollen, yet they are working. They can be batch-fabricated tens of thousands at a time, at a cost of only a penny or two each.
The laws of physics you learned in school have morphed into a new variation. Now, the effects of gravity and inertia that influence large, normal-sized machines have little effect, but the effects of atomic forces and surface science now are all important. There will be a wide range of applications for these devices in both commercial and defense systems, creating a market that will be around $100 billion a year in the not-too-distant future.
One leader in this emerging field is Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. Sandia scientists have developed unique technologies that enable the fabrication of complex mechanical systems on a chip, and the integration of these mechanical systems with on-chip control and communication electronics. The result is an intelligent microsystem that knows where it is, and what is going on around it. In other words, it’s a chip that can compute, sense, act and communicate.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could get a rapid diagnosis of any disease? Tiny biochips will cause such a revolution, and it has already begun.
Like computer chips, which perform millions of mathematical operations per second, biochips can perform thousands of biological reactions in a few seconds. A biochip is a small device with an array of DNA fragments that can be used to probe a cell sample for the presence of specific genes. For example, when use to test for a disease, such as drug resistant tuberculosis, a sample of the unknown TB DNA could be spread on a biochip and allowed to naturally pair up with TB DNA that has been identified as drug resistant.
By changing the DNA samples, an unlimited range of diseases can be quickly and efficiently diagnosed. With globalization, the spread of disease is increasingly quick and easy. Advanced biochips will enable doctors to get all the information they need in a few hours. The micro world encompasses far more than micromachines and biochips, but by bringing these to the forefront it si my hope that you might see just how big the micro revolution will be.
Daniel Burrus, one of the world's leading technology forecasters, business strategists, and author of six books
Copyright 2003 Author retains copyright. All Rights Reserved.
