Hierarchical Design and Test of Integrated Microsystems

The advent of monolithic integration of mechanical structures with electronics has ushered an era in which microchips can sense and act as well as compute and communicate. The complex device, component and system design issues involving such integrated chips requires the development of new CAD representations, methodologies and tools. A suite of tools that simultaneously considers the mechanical and electromechanical nature in such microsystems with traditional electronics natures is presented. These tools are based on a design methodology that partitions the micromechanical and electromechanical components in a hierarchical fashion into low-level reusable elements. This mixed-domain circuit representation is combined with KirchhofÞan network theory for an integrated microsystem simulation environment. Behavioral models from this hierarchical representation are combined with optimization into a tool that generates microstructure layouts meeting speciÞed performance criteria. A feature-recognition based extractor translates layout geometry into the mixed-domain circuit representation, enabling layout veriÞcation. Models that integrate the effects of process contaminations on a microstructure form the basis of a MEMS testing methodology.