SBIR Phase I: Comprehensive Metrology and Control of MEMS

这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目将建立在MEMS制造过程中测量关键特性的能力，以帮助MEMS铸造厂和设计师在缩短设计周期的同时制造更精确的传感器，并将建立电子探测自校准有可能取代目前昂贵而繁琐的物理校准方法。MEMS器件的校准目前占制造成本结构的20%以上，并且随着时间的推移一直在稳步增加。在更高性能的设备中，这可能是制造成本的80%。自校准方法的成功演示，精度等于或高于传统的物理校准方法，不仅使行业能够消除这种快速增长的成本驱动因素，还可以通过动态改变器件的性能-S有效参数和特性，使用电信号来调整在自校准过程中测量的值，从而实现按需性能MEMS器件的新时代。该项目的智能优势集中在开发一种电子方法来校准MEMS器件。与制约MEMS行业的传统昂贵、繁琐的物理方法相比，这种新的方法将提供同等或更高的精度。这项研究将对多个MEMS工艺、多个铸造厂和多个生产线制造的许多“自校准”MEMS器件进行测量，以提供稳健的数据集，以使用自校准提供新的工艺信息，并建立与传统校准方法的(技术和经济)结果比较。如果成功，这将在MEMS设计和生产中引入一种全新的范式，因为它放宽了物理校准限制，潜在地实现了一种全新的随需应变MEMS器件性能。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will establish the ability to measure key properties in the MEMS fabrication process to help MEMS foundries and designers build more accurate sensors while shortening the design cycle and will establish that electrically probed self-calibration has the potential to replace the current costly and cumbersome physical calibration approach. Calibration of MEMS devices currently comprises over 20% of the manufacturing cost structure and has been steadily increasing over time. In higher performance devices, it can be 80% of the manufacturing cost. Successful demonstration of self-calibration methods, with accuracy equal to, or greater than, traditional physical calibration methods will not only enable the industry to eliminate this rapidly-growing cost driver, but could also enable a new era of performance-on-demand MEMS devices by that dynamically alter the device?s effective parameters and properties using electrical signals to adjust the values measured in the self-calibration process.The intellectual merit of this project centers on the development of an electronic means to calibrate MEMS devices. This mew method will deliver equal or greater accuracy as compared with traditional costly, cumbersome physical means that are constraining the MEMS industry. The research will take measurements on many "self-calibrating" MEMS devices fabricated across multiple MEMS processes, from multiple foundries and multiple runs to provide a robust data set to provide new process information using self-calibration and also to establish comparative results (both technical and economics) results with traditional calibration approaches. If successful, this could usher in a completely new paradigm in MEMS design and production by relaxing the physical calibration constraints and potentially enabling an entirely new class of performance on demand MEMS devices.