1966年阿西穆夫(Asimov)在幻想小说“奇异的航行”中曾构思了一幅美丽的图画:一个比红血球还小的巡洋舰在人体血管迷宫中遨游。20年后的今天,科学家们已开始将这个理想付诸现实,一批活生生的微细电子机械已展示在人们面前。犹如30年前以装配电子管为主的电子行业孕育着将千百万只晶体管集成于小小的芯片上的集成电路一样,现在的机械行业也已和微电子学嫁接,孕育着崭新的集成微细电子机械,一场令人鼓舞的技术革命正在来临。在这场革命中,以马勒(Muller)和怀特(White)教授为首的加州大学伯克利分校的传感器和执行器中心已走在微细电子机械技术研究的前沿。1986年下半年,他们已成功地制出了厚度仅2微米的微细齿轮、弹簧曲柄和滑块(图1),并在1988年5月制出了世界上最小的马达(图2),在一 In 1966 Asimov conceived a beautiful picture in the fantasy novel “Bizarre Voyage.” A cruiser, smaller than a red blood cell, travels through the human vascular maze. Twenty years later, scientists have begun to put this ideal into reality, and a batch of living, fine electronic machinery has been shown. Just as the electronics industry, which dominated the assembly of tubes 30 years ago, has created integrated circuits that integrate millions of transistors into tiny chips, the machinery industry has now also been grafted with microelectronics to create a brand new integrated micro Electronic machinery, a encouraging technological revolution is coming. In this revolution, the University of California at Berkeley’s Sensor and Actuator Center, led by Muller and White, is at the forefront of microelectromechanical technology research. In the second half of 1986, they successfully produced micro-gears, spring cranks and sliders of only 2 microns in thickness (Figure 1) and made the world’s smallest motor in May 1988 (Figure 2) one