Micro- and nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS and NEMS), which combine electronics with miniature-size mechanical devices, are essential components of modern technology. It is the mathematical model describing 'electrostatically actuated' MEMS that is addressed in this monograph. Even the simplified models that the authors deal with still lead to very interesting second- and fourth-order nonlinear elliptic equations (in the stationary case) and to nonlinear parabolic equations (in the dynamic case). While nonlinear eigenvalue problems - where the stationary MEMS models fit - are a well-developed field of PDEs, the type of inverse square nonlinearity that appears here helps shed a new light on the class of singular supercritical problems and their specific challenges. Besides the practical considerations, the model is a rich source of interesting mathematical phenomena. Numerics, formal asymptotic analysis, and ODE methods give lots of information and point to many conjectures. ...
