Objectives of the project and expected results

1 Summary

Efficient design and manufacture of MEMS products is still restricted due to difficulties in establishing a modelling and simulation methodology that can accurately verify performance over the full specification space, characterise the impact of both potential faults and defects within the manufacturing process and predict the effect of external environmental parameters such as thermal stress. MACROS will address these problems through:

• Extension of existing MEMS component models to include non-idealities such as critical package-induced stress, residual stress and failure modes.
• Development of an efficient analytical modelling and simulation environment through the use of Cosserat theory to support component level model generation.
• Integration of the resulting methodology into a VHDL-AMS simulation environment through a new support utility.
  

The technical work required to achieve these objectives and to be carried out within this project includes:

1. The optimisation of a Cosserat simulation environment for MEMS capable of efficiently generating critical parameters for component level model generation.
2. Benchmarking work to characterise Cosserat models and simulation output against finite element simulations and measurements on test structures.
3. The development of efficient, ideally parameterisable model components within the Cosserat environment to introduce non-idealities due to package, environment, process and both failure and degradation modes at the component level.
4. Enhancement of a VHDL-AMS environment to allow accurate closed-loop analysis of performance, and sensitivity to the above effects.
5. Development of a utility to support MEMS modelling at both the structural and behavioural level.

The technical results from this project will be verified and demonstrated on both a TANG oscillator and a microactuator for hard disk drive applications. These are both commercial applications that will support the exploitation of results into better design and manufacturing validation procedures for MEMS customers. The optimisation of support tools and the modelling methodology will be demonstrated through an enhanced commercial VHDL-AMS simulation environment, prototype Cosserat simulator, model generation methodology and support interface.

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