Table 2.

Evolution of MEMS from the early 1950s.

Year	1st Milestone	2nd Milestone	3rd Milestone	4th Milestone	5th Milestone
1950s	1958 Silicon strain gauges commercialized	1959 Richard Feynman issues a challenge to make an electrical motor smaller than 1/64th of an inch.	n/a	n/a	n/a
1960s	1961 First silicon pressure sensor fabricated	1967 Invention of surface micromachining and Resonant Gate Field Effect Transistor, (RGT).	1968 Development of sacrificial materials to free MEMS from the silicon substrate.	n/a	n/a
1970s	1970 First silicon accelerometer demonstrated	1979 First micro machined inkjet nozzle	n/a	n/a	n/a
1980s	1980–1982 First experiments in surface micro machined silicon.	1982 Disposable blood pressure transducer	1982 Silicon etching standards established	1982 LIGA process (fabrication of high-aspect-ratio microstructures)	1988 First MEMS conference
1990s	1992 First micro machined hinge	1993 First surface micro machined accelerometer sold (Analog Devices, ADXL50)	1994 Deep Reactive Ion Etching is patented	1995 BioMEMS emerge and grow fast
2000s	2000 MEMS optical-networking components industrialized in large scales	2010 MEMS adapted to handheld electronic devices	2015 MEMS adapted to wearable and human centric technologies	2020 MEMS as smart sensors and MEMS in robotic servants