The book is focused on the use of functional oxide and nitride films to enlarge the application range of MEMS (microelectromechanical systems), including micro-sensors, micro-actuators, transducers, and electronic components for microwaves and optical communications systems. Applications, emerging applications, fabrication technology, and functioning issues are presented and discussed. The book covers the following topics:

Part A: Applications and devices with electroceramic-based MEMS:

• Chemical microsensors
• Microactuators based on thin films
• Micromachined ultrasonic transducers
• Thick-film piezoelectric and magnetostrictive devices
• Pyroelectric microsystems
• RF bulk acoustic wave resonators and filters
• High frequency tunable devices
• MEMS for optical functionality

Part B: Materials, fabrication technology, and functionality:

• Ceramic thick films for MEMS
• Piezoelectric thin films for MEMS
• Materials and technology in thin films for tunable high frequency devices
• Permittivity, tunability, and loss in ferroelectrics for reconfigurable high frequency electronics
• Microfabrication of piezoelectric MEMS
• Nano patterning methods for electroceramics
• Soft lithography emerging techniques

The book is addressed to engineers, scientists, and researchers of various disciplines, device engineers, materials engineers, chemists, physicists, and microtechnologists who are working and/or interested in this fast-growing and highly promising field. The publication of this book follows a special issue on electroceramic-based MEMS that was published in the Journal of Electroceramics at the beginning of 2004. The ten invited papers of that special issue were adapted by the authors into chapters of the present book, and five additional chapters were added.