  The smart integrated systems of tomorrow would demand a combination of
micromechanical components and traditional electronics. On-chip solutions will
be the ultimate goal. One way of making such systems is to implement the
mechanical parts in an ordinary CMOS process. This procedure has been used to
design an oscillator consisting of a resonating cantilever beam and a CMOS
Pierce feedback amplifier. The resonating frequency is changed if the beam is
bent by external forces. The paper describes central features of this procedure
and highlights the design considerations for the CMOS-MEMS oscillator. The
circuit is used as an example of a "VLSI designer" way of making future
integrated micromechanical and microelectronic systems on-chip. The possibility
for expansion to larger systems is reviewed.
