Standard MEMS and Zyvex Announce Development Partnership

    RICHARDSON, Texas and BURLINGTON, Mass.--Jan. 19, 2001--

    Zyvex Corporation and Standard MEMS, Inc. today announced a two-year collaborative program to develop valuable new capabilities
    for the microsystems community

    Zyvex's mission is to be the industry leader in adaptable, affordable molecular manufacturing. Standard MEMS offers concurrent engineering and technology solutions in all areas of MEMS production. The combined resources of the two companies will lead to MEMS component libraries and workstations for assembled microsystems and advanced custom packaging solutions.
    "We are extremely pleased to be working with the fastest growing and most innovative MEMS company in the world," said James R. Von Ehr, President and CEO of Zyvex. "Zyvex develops MEMS component designs and assembly technologies that only Standard MEMS' superior manufacturing technology can build. Our collaboration with Standard MEMS will enable Zyvex to produce three-dimensional assembled microsystems that were simply impossible before. These microsystems will further the Zyvex top-down nanotechnology goals of flexible, automated manufacturing at ever-decreasing sizes."
    Nicholas E. Ortyl, President and CEO of Standard MEMS, said, "MEMS assembly and packaging is a challenging issue we are addressing on a number of fronts. Zyvex has some promising ideas for new classes of products that we expect our current and future customers will find attractive. Our collaboration with such an innovative company should deliver benefits across a wide range of customers, from automotive to medical to telecom."
    Under this agreement, MEMS components will be built with a process newly developed by Standard MEMS to combine surface and bulk silicon micromachining in one processing run. This innovation allows Zyvex to create components that can be picked off the bulk silicon wafer and assembled into complex three-dimensional systems. Zyvex will use this new process to produce component libraries of electromechanical functions and manipulation devices that will lead to increasingly complex and functional microsystems.
    "This technology enables us to bridge a millionfold gap in size. With these components we can build microsystems at the millimeter scale with parts measured in micrometers that can handle parts measured in nanometers," said William Trimmer, Standard MEMS Chief Technical Officer.
    Dr. Grady Roberts, Vice-President of Research at Zyvex said, "We are excited about following Feynman's dream of making smaller hands to make smaller hands. This collaboration will enable the prototyping and large scale manufacturing of a versatile tool set for micro- and nano- manipulation."
    The two companies expect to have up to a dozen different electromechanical function blocks working within the next six months. These efforts will facilitate early prototype system designs for the scientific apparatus and biomedical communities. Actual production microsystems are expected to take another 12-18 months to develop.
    MEMS (MicroElectroMechanical Systems), often called silicon micromachines, apply the production tools of integrated circuit processing to the construction of small, precise mechanical devices, at the millimeter scale and smaller. MEMS technology is widely used today in inkjet printer heads, automobile airbag sensors, and, experimentally, in optical switching applications and medical devices. A $3B business in 2000, MEMS is expected to grow to over $8B by 2004.