During the last 10 years, the Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE) of Silicon has opened new fields of application in MEMS and device integration. Opposite to the wet anisotropic etching, the DRIE process prevents lateral etching of the Si resulting in highly anisotropic etch profiles at high etch rates and with high aspect ratio. Today, fully integrated Microsystems on a single chip include biological or chemical sensors, movable parts and actuators, micro-fluidics, optics and electronics for the control from large exposed areas for Si microphone to comb structures for 3D high precision inertial sensors to nanofeatures.

MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) include:
- Inertial Sensors: Gyroscopes, Accelerometers,
- Mobile Phones Devices: Silicon Microphones, RF MEMS,
- Ink Jet Printer Heads,
- Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems,
- Biomedical integrated Devices.