Seminar on CAD tools for MEMS: Tuesday, July 31, 2 pm, CISX Auditorium

[Mary Tang]

*****Reminder*****

Dr. Mary Ann Maher, of SoftMEMS LLC, will be here to discuss the suite 
of SoftMEMS CAD tools originally designed for MEMS layouts, but with 
applicability to IC's as well. One of the most interesting features of 
the SoftMEMS is its ability to generate 3-D cross-sections at any 
physical point on the CAD layout -- and at any point in the process 
using standard simulators. This will be held in the CISX Auditorium on 
Tuesday, July 31, at 2 pm.


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Recent advances in computer aided design for MEMS, MOEMS, RF-MEMS and 
Microfluidics will be discussed in this seminar. A CAD tool that allows 
designers to create MEMS and NEMS mask layouts in the L-Edit and Cadence 
environments by adding special tools for designers to create MEMS 
primitives, such as splines, fillets and general equation-based curves 
and recover* *shapes such as circles and torii from multi-sided polygons 
found in formats such as GDS II will be described. Tools* *to automate 
tasks that are time-consuming such as generating holes and dimples to 
properly release MEMS structures and automatic generation of typical 
MEMS structures such as comb-drives and springs are also presented.

A way in which 3D geometric models of MEMS devices can be made 
automatically from the L-Edit or Cadence layouts and a fabrication 
process description that can be entered by the user will be described. 
Emulation of surface and bulk micromachining process steps such as 
material deposit, etch, mechanical polish, diffusion, growth, 
electroplating and wafer manipulation steps will be explained. Transfer 
of generated models to finite element programs such as ANSYS and 
COMSOL/FEMLAB will be demonstrated. A system for adding boundary 
conditions to the layout for automatic transfer to the FEM environment 
will also be shown.

Furthermore, a description of how to perform mixed MEMS/IC schematic 
capture and simulation with models for MEMS devices in standard 
simulators such as Cadence, Tanner, Agilent and Matlab will be 
presented. A library of composable MEMS models will be described 
parameterized by process parameters, material properties and device 
dimensions. The models are represented with signals in the 
6DOF-mechanical, thermal, magnetic, fluidic, optical, and electro-static 
domains and are written in languages such as SPICE, C-code, Verilog-A or 
Matlab. Finally, the talk will describe methods for automatically 
creating models of MEMS devices from data from finite element simulators 
using model order reduction techniques.

A live demo of the CAD tool will be given with examples from Optical 
MEMS, RF MEMS, Microfluidics.

About the speaker:

*Dr. Mary Ann Maher,* received her PhD from Caltech in 1989 in the area 
of semiconductor device modeling. She pursued post doctoral studies at 
the CSEM in Neuchatel, Switzerland, where she studied analog memories 
and designed low power analog ICs with on-chip sensors for artificial 
vision applications. At Tanner Research she began the simulation and 
modeling group and launched Tanner’s T-Spice analog circuit simulator 
product. As Director of Advanced Products, she brought to market 
Tanner’s MEMS Pro microsystem and MCM Pro multi-chip module and 
packaging design tool suites. Moving to MEMSCAP, she became the 
company’s CTO and she is now the CEO of SoftMEMS LLC.

-- 
Mary X. Tang, Ph.D.
Stanford Nanofabrication Facility
CIS Room 136, Mail Code 4070
Stanford, CA  94305
(650)723-9980
mtang at stanford.edu
http://snf.stanford.edu