Micro-Opto-Electro-Mechanical Systems - History of MOEMS

History of MOEMS

During 1991-1993, Dr. M. Edward Motamedi, a former Rockwell International innovator in the areas of both Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and Micro-optics, used internally the acronym of MOEMS for Micro-Opto-Electro-Mechanical Systems. This was to distinguish between Optical MEMS and MOEMS, where Optical MEMS could include bulk optics but MOEMS is truly based on microtechnology where MOEMS devices are batched processed exactly like integrated circuits, but this is not true in most cases for Optical MEMS.

In 1993, Dr. Motamedi officially introduced MOEMS for the first time, as the powerful combination of MEMS and Micro-optics, in an invited talk at the SPIE Critical Reviews of Optical Science and Technology conference in San Diego. In this talk Dr. Motamedi introduced the figure bellow, for showing that MOEMS is the interaction of three major microtechnologies; namely Micro-optics, Micromechanics, and Microelectronics.