Sandia National Laboratories has developed an ability to fabricate multilayered, all carbon MEMS devices, complete with future mixed material signal routing. Carbon is a durable and adaptable material, suitable for many microelectronics applications and can be micromachined from blanket films, enabling a production scalable fabrication process. Silicon based MEMS systems have dominated the market for 20+ years of development, with supplemental effort leveraging the IC industry. Carbon as a standalone material and silicon with carbon offer unique combinations of material properties which complement future design space for harsh environments [Figure 1]. It can withstand high temperatures, and can also be tuned for specific performance characteristics by incorporating nanoparticles, effectively manipulating resistivity, Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio. Carbon is highly conductive, inexpensive, and easy to produce.

Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA-0003525. The views expressed in the article do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Energy or the United States Government.