Harvey C. Nathanson

Who is Harvey C. Nathanson?

Harvey C. Nathanson is an American electrical engineer who invented the first MEMS device of the type now found in consumer products ranging from cellular phones to digital projectors.

MEMS devices, which are made using integrated circuit fabrication techniques, are composed of small moving mechanical elements that generally range from 1 to 100 micrometres in size. Typical MEMS devices include the accelerometers found in automobile airbags and video game controllers, and piezoelectric mechanisms used in inkjet printers.

Nathanson conceived the first MEMS device in 1965 to serve as a tuner for microelectronic radios. It was developed with Robert A. Wickstrom and William E. Newell at Westinghouse Research Labs in Pittsburgh, PA., and patented as a Microelectric Frequency Selective Apparatus.

A refined version of the device was subsequently patented as the Resonant Gate Transistor.

In his work developing similar devices, Nathanson pioneered a method of batch fabrication in which layers of insulators and metal on silicon wafers are shaped and undercut through the use of masks and sacrificial layers, a process that would later become a mainstay of MEMS manufacturing.