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To: Michel Bera who wrote (312)	2/15/1998 11:13:00 AM
From: JMD	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5853

Michael, fascinating post on MEMS; thank you for that and the book references. As another person observed however, what can one do about this from an investment perspective? I have no doubt that these little critters will prove enormously useful and drive huge markets--but for whom? Two 'pure play' companies in the machine vision field are Cognex and Adept Technology, both worth a look. But machine vision is not MEMS of course, do you have any suggestions?. Regards, Mike Doyle

To: Michel Bera who wrote (312)	2/16/1998 2:37:00 AM
From: GuinnessGuy	Respond to of 5853

MiB, Nice 2 cents.-g- I case you weren't aware, there is a thread in SI that is devoted to MEMS. Looks like it got to 56 posts before it stalled out on the 22nd of last month. Maybe you'd care to revive it? I'll certainly volunteer to lurk if you do.-g- TIA. Subject 17339 Craig

To: Michel Bera who wrote (312)	2/18/1998 2:12:00 AM
From: JF Quinnelly	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 5853

There is an article in Jan-Feb '98 issue of MIT's Technology Review (pg 10) about a MEMS Gas Turbine. It's 4mm in diameter, with a 2mm long combustion chamber. It's made out of silicon, and fabbed like a computer chip. The proposal is to combine this turbine with a MEMS generator to create an electric source to replace batteries. It would weigh about 1 gram. The estimate is that such an engine would produce 10 to 20 times the power of the best chemical batteries.

To: Michel Bera who wrote (312)	2/19/1998 5:43:00 PM
From: George Gilder	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 5853

Another of these zero billion dollar markets growing to $15 billion "early in the next century", consisting of angel dust and nanosylphs, microhobbits and picoceas. I don't know how they define these widgets to justify the current "$2.2 billion" market (I assume they include micromirrors, Bragg gratings, and other optical and optoelectronic devices of nanometer dimensions). Nanotechnology is mostly a bust and if MEMS is just a new monicker for these mostly silly technologies (as opposed to real silicon devices), it just represents a trip to the image reengineers. The magic of microelectronics and optics comes from their foundation in information processing, in which the rule is the smaller the better and in which nanotechnologies are already routine. This rule does not usually apply to machines exerting a physical force or performing a physical function.