Microelectromechanic system
Micromachinery manufactured by photolithographic methods (falling under non atomically precise manufacturing methods).
They typically are made from semiconductors.
Top-down bottom-up overlap
MEMS robotics eventually may be usable to grab pick and place
bottom up self assembled structures once they reach sufficient size.
To note is maybe that MEMS cannot be manufactured to as high a resolution as non mechanical electronic chips can.
So there is still quite a stretch to scale up.
And at the point where self assembled stuff (self assemblying in a fully termination controlling way !!)
becomes of MEMS grippable size, at that point the nanosystems themselves might have an easy time to further scale up
without any external help from MEMS.
Self assemblying stuff to MEMS grippable size without termination control has already been achieved
with structural DNA nanotechnology. But these are just repetitive structure flakes with an undefined non atomically precise fringe.
Similar to nanoscystals produced by thermodynamic means.
Stiction
MEMS suffer from a problem called "stiction".
The signal to noise ration in MEMS manufacturing makes quite rough surfaces.
Combine that with the Van der Waals force gaining in relevance and
you have a perfect recipe for wear.
This is completely contrary to superlubricity of crystolecular sleeve bearings.
That have zero motion induced wear (other effects like radiation make damage).
Related: Effects of current day experimental research limitations
Related
- Bridging the gaps - top down
- Non atomically precise nanomanufacturing methods#Microscale
- MEMS can work in conjunction with microfluidics.
External links
Not MEMS but related – galvanoelectric microfabrication techniques:
