Customer Reviews

Microsystem Design

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book tries to cover many different topics at the same time and sometimes makes a quite messy work. However, the book has very good chapters and not so good ones. It provides a good introduction on MEMS fabrication, but a more interested reader will find difficult to fabricate MEMS with the given information. Chapters 5,6,7 and 8 are excellent, but chapters 9, 10,11 and 12 are incomplete and not easily understandable for a Electrical Engineer graduate student. Chapter 13 begins with general equations to be simplified considerably later, giving the impression to the reader that he has learned only a little about fluids. Chapter 11 is quite confusing and chapter 12 lack examples in 2D and 3D lumped models.

This book is a good graduate level MEMS book, but do not think that you will be able to design a MEMS chip after just reading. I bought this one as a part of MEMS Design course at Northeastern University. MEMS students should be familiar with pSpice circuit simulation and Matlab in order to even start thinking of designing MEMS. Microfabrication, the way it is explained here, is very brief, and not very useful.

In 23 chapters, Senturia brings together a dizzying array of fields of engineering necessary to design micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and examples of MEMS products. For instance, he covers Euler beam theory, the Navier-Stokes equation, micromachining, feedback circuits, and electronic noise, and then anchors these topics with a gyroscope and a DNA amplifier, among other devices.

Senturia's approach to some chapters strikes me as a little idiosyncratic, but he does convey the principles quite well. His love for the material shines through in a way that many authors cannot manage.

Unlike books on single topics, this text cannot be used as a definitive guide to anything. Because Sentuira only has only 30 pages or so for each of the very broad topics that he covers, he doesn't cover any of them in much depth. However, the reader does get a sense of the issues that each physical domain presents. For those who need to know more, Senturia provides a short list of further reading in each chapter. I think of this book as a comprehensive starting point that can help me determine what further investigation I need.

Aesthetically, the text is somewhat lacking. The small pages are cramped compared to those of larger-format texts, and the figures are subpar.

This book is definitely a must-have for anyone interested in MEMS design. It's one of the classic references on microsystems that everyone should have read at least once.

The sections on mathematical modeling are especially good, and the set of detailed examples at the end are clear and illustrative.

To name some drawbacks, the chapter on fabrication is maybe a bit out of date, and more solved practical exercises are missing.

The book is very well written and discussed both aspects of MEMS - fabrication and design.
Fabrication part is well written and can be clearly understood. I was really impressed with the design part of the book - lumped systems, etc.

Good book for grad students.

A good senior in physics or electrical engineering would be able to use this as either a textbook or a self-study book as an introduction to MEMS. Could you go off and build a new device after reading this book? Probably not, but you could go off and work with a group of more experienced individuals and built a device. This would get you up to speed.

The text's coverage is somewhat uneven, in places it seems overly detailed, and in others too sparse. However, one of my colleagues (and another reviewer) identified completely different over- and under-coverage sections, so I'm going to consider it to be personal taste as much as anything else.

In short, it's a good, but not perfect text. It gets five stars though for being the best there is at the moment.

This book is good just for a starter's guide to MEMS. It just touches a wide range of topics. But if you want to learn the subject with real understanding, then this book can not help you.