Doctor Richard Stephen Muller is an American professor at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of the University of California at Berkeley.
Education
Muller received the degree of Mechanical Engineer (with highest honors) from the Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955. And his Master of Surgery in Electrical Engineering and Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering and Physics, in 1957 and 1962, respectively, at the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, California.
Career
He made contribution to the founding and growth of the field of MicroElectromechanical Systems (Microelectromechanical Systems). His seminal contribution of polysilicon sacrificially-released beams in 1982 led to a class of micromanufacturing process called surface micromachining. This process preceded the creation of low cost, mass-produced commercial micro accelerometers, which are used in automotive collision sensors for airbag deployment.
Together with Richard White, he created BSAC (Berkeley Sensors and Actuators Center), an organization that produced many academic generations of researchers and intellectual properties in the Microelectromechanical Systems field, a field that in 2013, accounted for multi-billion dollar revenue worldwide.
In 1962, he joined the Electrical Engineering faculty at University of California Berkeley. His initial research and teaching on the physics of integrated-circuit devices led to collaboration with Theodore I. Kamins of Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in writing Device Electronics for Integrated Circuits, first published by John Wiley & Sons in 1977, with a second edition in 1986, and a third edition appearing in 2002.
In 1990, he and others proposed to Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and American Society of Mechanical Engineers the creation of a Microelectromechanical Systems technical journal, which began publication in 1991 as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers/American Society of Mechanical Engineers Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers/American Society of Mechanical Engineers JMEMS). Muller and his student Roger Howe created the process of surface micromachining using polysilicon (poly) as a structural material, and silicon oxide as a sacrificial layer.
This surface micromachining process becomes the foundation of high volume airbag accelerometers.
The surface micromachining process is the fundamental process for many consumer, industrial, and military devices today, including microphones, pressure sensors, electronic filters, spectrometers, and e-readers.
Membership
He is a member of the United States National Academy of Engineering. From 1955 to 1962 he was a member of the technical staff at the Hughes Aircraft Company, Culver City, California. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.