Smart Materials and Metamaterials for Mems: A Growing Trend in Microsystems Technology

Abstract

The rapid development of microsystems technology on one side and the impressive progresses in the fields of smart materials and metamaterials on the other side open the possibility to create a new field of innovative Smart and Meta -Microsystems or Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS). Smart materials and metamaterials can give to MEMS unprecedented properties for sensing and actuation. The potentialities of this new class of Microsystems are discussed and put in evidence in this paper starting from recent works of the Authors' group related to piezoelectric actuated Microsystems and to micro-scale Metamaterials endowed with band-gap and auxetic properties.