Design for test and reliability of integrated nanoscale devices and systems

以复杂、高度集成的电路和系统为形式的电子产品现在已经渗透到我们日常生活的方方面面。我们已经见证了50多年的持续增长，以及日益增长的复杂性和性能。我们现在正在迅速进入所谓的晚硅和后硅时代。纳米规模的设备正在迅速涌现，大量面向各种应用的集成微系统正在开发和部署，从个性化的内部药物输送到环境监测。这类系统的质量和可靠性非常重要，在许多情况下，可能对生命至关重要。这项研究的重点是确保这些极其复杂的系统可以有效地进行测试，以便只有满足所有预期设计和制造规范的设备和系统才能真正发货给客户。总体而言，这是一个非常具有挑战性的问题，因为可能的故障机制非常多，而且微系统总体上很复杂。这项工作将产生健壮的方法来确保系统的可测试性，从而确保系统的质量。除了测试，这项研究还解决了可靠性问题。不仅重要的是对系统的出厂质量进行测试，而且许多系统在部署到外地时还需要可靠地运行多年。如何设计和制造这样的新兴微系统以确保可靠的性能也是本研究的重点。这项研究将在两个方面造福加拿大人。将培训高素质和多才多艺的工程师。这项研究还将产生重要的新测试方法，对这一集成纳米/微系统领域的其他研究人员有用，并对目前和未来专注于向广大公众迅速提供高质量和可靠的新型微系统的从业者有用。

Electronics in the form of complex, highly integrated circuits and systems have now penetrated every aspects of our day to day lives. We have seen more than five decades of constant growth and increasing complexity and performance. We are now rapidly entering the so-called late- and post-silicon era. Nanoscale types of devices are rapidly emerging, and a vast array of integrated microsystems geared for all kinds of applications, from personalized internal drug delivery to the monitoring of the environment, are being developed and deployed. The quality and reliability of such systems is very important and, in many cases, may be life-critical. This research focuses on the problem of making sure that these extremely complex systems can be tested efficiently such that only the devices and systems that meet all the intended design and fabrication specifications are actually shipped to customers. Overall, this is a very challenging problem, because of the very large number of possible failure mechanisms and the overall complexity of the microsystems. The work will yield robust methods to ensure the testability of systems, and thereby, their quality as well. In addition to test, this research addresses issues of reliability. It is not only important that the systems be tested for outgoing quality, but many systems also need to perform reliably for many years, while deployed in the field. How such emerging microsystems ought to be designed and fabricated to ensure a reliable performance is a focus of this research as well. This research will benefit Canadians in two ways. Highly qualified and versatile engineers will be trained. The research will also yield important new test methodologies useful for other researchers in this field of integrated nano-/microsystems well as useful for current and future practitioners focused on making high quality and reliable novel microsystems rapidly available to the public at large.