Structured Design Methods for MEMS , Antonsson , November 1 , 1995 1 Structured Design Methods for MEMSNovember

the fabrication of MEMS has been made without the beneet of design automation techniques. In contrast, the design of VLSI systems has become highly formalized and automated. One of the goals of Mead and Conway's early work in the VLSI area was to permit \ordinary engineers" to perform design 12]. Prior to their work, VLSI design was the exclusive domain of highly trained and experienced specialists. Other engineering domains (e.g., MEMS design) have not had the beneet of the same level of formalism and automation in design, and engineering design in these areas remains the province of highly trained and experienced specialists. 1 Work recently begun in several research groups (including our own) aims to permit rapid, accurate, conservative mask-layout synthesis of MEMS in a way analogous to present-day VLSI design. The long-range objective is to enable a MEMS designer to specify a desired micro-mechanical function (e.g., a mechanical spring with particular characteristics), and have a system automatically generate the information (mask-layout, and other fabrication instructions) to create the shape that exhibits the desired function. This approach will mean that MEMS designers will be able to concentrate on the desired function of the device, rather than the details of its physical manifestation. Thus the goal is: To develop a MEMS mask-layout synthesis methodology that will automatically create a mask-layout for a given desired nal 3-D shape. Attaining this goal will, however, be diicult. Mechanical systems are more complex than digital VLSI: there is no (single) language to describe mechanical function; the geometry of mechanical systems is typically complex (non-Manhattan); the number of primitive mechanical elements is large; there is no separation between function and form (the case of a mechanical transmission, for example, supports the bearings; contains the 1 Here the term \formal" is used to mean computable, in the sense that a design process can be automated. There are many methods that are in daily use in mechanical engineering design, but are insuuciently formal to permit automation of the design process. \Systematized" is a commonly used synonym to \formal" as the term is used here.