Leuven, Belgium: Coventor, a supplier of design technology for micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), and the nanoelectronics research center Imec have announced a strategic partnership to improve and expand the use of advanced design and manufacturing techniques for the development of CMOS integrated MEMS.
The partnership includes strategic alignment on research and development (R&D) roadmaps and collaboration on advanced research topics. Teams from Imec and Coventor will collaborate on expanding Imec’s use of Coventor’s software tools suite for MEMS + IC design. They will jointly develop process design kits (PDKs) for Imec’s silicon-germanium (SiGe) MEMS-above-IC process.
Building on both organizations’ success with MEMS design and manufacturing, the partnership aims at developing solutions to make MEMS more accessible to both MEMS and IC designers. Process design kits will be developed to improve the efficiency of this MEMS-IC co-design. The kits will target Imec’s SiGe MEMS technology, which uses a MEMS-last approach. The MEMS are processed after and on top of the CMOS circuits, enabling a monolithic integration of MEMS devices with the driving and readout electronics on the same die.
The SiGe MEMS platform’s flexible and modular approach also allows application-specific tuning and optimization of MEMS layer thicknesses and properties, as well as the processing of optional functional layers on top of the MEMS devices.
The partnership will leverage Coventor’s background in developing the necessary infrastructure for MEMS design environments.
Coventor
www.coventor.com
Imec
www2.Imec.be/