Hi, I am also a graduate student, but in MEMS. Almost done with my
Ph.D., actually. Maybe I can put down some of my views on MEMS.

competition: There is competition on the academic level between mostly
Universities. That can be seen in journals and conferences. Sometimes
groups publish like creasy, the more the better. But there is a lot of
good stuff out there. You will only find few corporate research
publications.

monopoly: Yes, for MEMS you will need a clean room and a lot of other
very expensive equipment. Thus you are left with a couple of
universities and big companies. You see smaller companies entering MEMS
but many of them underestimate the cost and, most of all, the time it
takes to make this stuff. Those companies then fail.

However, MEMS is not the only way to create small things. As you might
have read by now, typical for MEMS is to create a multitude of devices
at the same time on the wafer (we call that batch fabrication). It gets
only chaep if you want to make tons of devices, just like in
microelectronics. But MEMS people like me often want to sell our
technology because we have the facilities and need to use them badly.
Other technologies, there are for example precision (diamond) machining,
ultrasonic grinding, electrochemical machining, atomic force microscopy
(which can be used to assembel individual atoms!), all of which are not
batch processes.

social implications: I don't know. This might change everything.
Example: Most exiting to me seems an emerging field that some call power
MEMS. That involves tiny engines that generate "real" power, and very
efficient. Energy might then not be generated and distributed as we know
it any more, in big power plants and so on, but locally where it is
needed. Bla bla bla.
--
Alexander Hoelke

graduate student

University of Cincinnati
ECE - CMSM

Phone:  (513)556-1997 / (513)556-4795
FAX:            (513)556-7326