Micro and Nanosystems, 2011, 3, ????-???? 1 1876-4029/11 $58.00+.00 © 2011 Bentham Science Publishers A Costing Methodology for Products Based on Emerging Micro and Nano Manufacturing Technologies S. Bigot* ,a , J. Nestler b , P. Dorrington c and S. Dimov a a Cardiff School of Engineering, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK b Chemnitz University of Technology, Center for Microtechnologies, Chemnitz, Germany c PDR – The National Centre for Product Design and Development Research, UWIC, Cardiff, UK Abstract: This paper introduces a simple costing methodology adopted in a European research project for comparing the cost of alternative manufacturing routes when designing new innovative micro and nano products. This methodology has been specifically developed to assess the product development implication of emerging manufacturing technologies, which might still be under development in research labs. To illustrate the proposed methodology, its application to the costing of a microfluidic system for a lab-on-chip device is described, highlighting how such early cost estimation can be considered concurrently with research challenges when making design decisions at the research stage. Keywords: Manufacturing Routes, Cost estimation, emerging micro and nano technologies. 1. INTRODUCTION The purpose of this paper is to introduce a method for assessing the manufacturing cost when employing emerging micro and nano manufacturing technologies (MNTs) at the early stages of product design. The focus is on products that could only be produced using a combination of manufacturing technologies, which capabilities are not well characterised and some of them are still being developed in research labs. Looking at the current range of new high-tech and emerging products it is not difficult to see that there is a trend for integrating multiple functions in as small as possible enclosures/packages. Such systems will generally include functions that require different length scale features, for instance nanoelectronics, various microsensors, micro and/or nano actuators or microfluidic devices, encapsulated in a single container [1]. The concerted efforts of designers and manufacturing specialist to achieve such Function and Length Scale Integration (FLSI) can be justified by the numerous advantages that the adoption of this product development philosophy offers as reductions in cost, size, material usage and power consumption. However, the incorporation of various functions in a single component is a difficult task due to the necessity to manufacture different structures reliably and cost effectively from nanometre through micro to meso scales. Most of these types of structures can only be machined and/or assembled together through the use of the latest state-of-the-art technologies and possible novel combinations of them, which on its own brings significant design and manufacturing challenges. In particular, various new technologies are emerging [2] and complementing lithography-based processes for the manufacture of devices or components incorporating micro- and nano-scale features, such as micro milling, micro Electro *Address correspondence to this author at the Cardiff School of Engineering, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK; Tel: ???????????????; Fax: ???????????????; E-mail: ?????????????????????? Discharge Machining, laser ablation focused ion beam... It is important to stress that these micro and nano manufacturing technologies are limited in their capabilities for producing 3D free-form micro structures in a wide range of materials [3]. For the manufacture of micro products, only an innovative integration of micro and nano manufacturing technologies, for example in the form of process chains, can provide the necessary solutions for achieving a high throughput and cost effective production of micro and nano structured components and devices. There are many emerging product ideas and concepts based on FLSI and they are often the result of multidisciplinary R&D programmes. In particular, the following products are good examples of innovative applications of this design and manufacturing approach: • the polymer-based lab-on-chip platform (Fig. 1a) for protein detection in point-of-care applications developed in the European FP6 project SEMOFS [4], which aimed at integrating active optical components like a planar surface plasmon resonance sensors with a microfluidic system (including actuators); • a lab-on-a-chip device incorporating the functionalities of a biological laboratory on a single substrate through a network of microfluidic channels, reservoirs, valves, pumps, and microsensors (Fig. 1b) to achieve high sensitivity, analysis speed, low sample consumption, and measurement automation and standardization [5]. • a contact lens encapsulating micron-scale metal interconnects in a biocompatible polymer (Fig. 1c) and including light emitting diodes was successfully produced [6], opening the door to a wide range of exiting new consumer products, such as a see-through display that could be both remotely powered and controlled via a wireless link with potential applications in gaming, training, and manufacturing. A common aspect in all these products is that the integration of various functions requires the development of new manufacturing methods for incorporating different