UCLA Extension will be offering a 3 day course on MEMS next month:

Title:     Micro Electro Mechanical Systems:
           Technology, Design, and Applications
Date:      March 7-9 (Monday through Wednesday)
Lecturers: Kris Pister, PhD
           William Kaiser, PhD
           Kurt Petersen, PhD
Cost:      $1295

Details are given below. For more information, call

    Kris Pister
    (310) 206-4420
    pister@ee.ucla.edu
    or
    UCLA Short Course Program Office
    (310) 825-3344
    fax (310) 206-2815

ksjp

Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS):
technology, design, and applications

Overview

For several decades, micro electro-mechanical silicon sensors have made steady
progress in the commercial market, with medical sensor sales in the millions,
and automotive sensor sales in the tens of millions of parts per year. With the
maturity of the sensor technologies as a base, and the recent development of
several new fabrication methods, MEMS research has enjoyed an explosive growth.
This growth is evident in the introduction of several new journals dedicated to
MEMS, more than a dozen regular MEMS conferences worldwide, and a dramatic
increase in government and industrial funding for MEMS research in the U.S.,
Japan, and Europe.

This course will teach the fundamentals of MEMS fabrication technology, sensor
and actuator component design, physical limits to sensor and actuator
performance, and system integration issues. The discussion of MEMS fabrication
technology will cover bulk and surface micromachining of silicon (as well as
several other "unconventional" methods), with particular emphasis on two
commercially available processes. The design of MEMS will be taught by case
study of several existing sensors and actuators, and students will be given CIF
files with examples of the structures analyzed. Advantages and disadvantages of
MEMS will be explored by examining the fundamental physical limits (e.g. noise
performance) of these devices. System integration and commercialization issues
such as manufacturability, packaging, and interfacing MEMS will be illustrated
by case study of existing products.

Included in the cost of the course is

  * access to layout tools at UCLA for the remainder of the week (please notify
    Dr. Pister if you intend to use these facilities; 310-206-4420,
    pister@ee.ucla.edu)
  * simple MEMS cell libraries
    material property and process test structures CMOS cells - sensors,
    actuators, digital and analog electronics Surface micromachining cells:
    comb drives, flexures 3D hinged structures: several basic hinges, spring
    locked plates
  * space on a multi-project chip which will be fabricated after the completion
    of the course, allowing each participant to create his/her own MEMS
    structures

course materials

Lecture notes
material property information
simple MEMS cell libraries

Coordinator and lecturer

Kristofer S.J. Pister, PhD
Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering Department,
School of Engineering and Applied Science, UCLA

Dr. Pister received his B.A. in Applied Physics from the University of
California, San Diego, in 1986, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical
Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1989 and 1992. In
1987 and 1988 Dr. Pister worked at Hewlett Packard in Circuit Technology
Research and Development. In 1992 he joined the faculty in Electrical
Engineering at UCLA, where he is currently an assistant professor. His
background is in systems and control theory, and his recent work has been in
process development for MEMS, including three dimensional structures with
integrated CMOS electronics. Since arriving at UCLA Dr. Pister has developed
two graduate level courses in MEMS, one in fabrication technology, and one in
integrated microsystem design. Dr. Pister's research interests include MEMS,
milli and micro robotics, and biomedical applications of electromechanical
systems, and control theory.

Lecturers

William Kaiser, PhD
Senior Research Scientist and Technical group Leader, Jet Propulsion
Laboratory;
Institute Visiting Associate at the California Institute of Technology.
Dr. Kaiser's research activities include development and implementation of
microinstruments and microsensors for space and terrestrial applications as
well as the development of novel probes for materials analysis.

Among Dr. Kaiser's most significant inventions is Ballistic-Electron-Emission
Microscopy (BEEM). BEEM, developed in 1987 in collaboration with L.D. Bell, is
based on Scanning Tunneling Microscopy, a ten-year-old technique for
atomic-scale surface imaging which has revolutionized the field of Surface
Science. Dr. Kaiser is also the co-inventor of a fundamentally new displacement
transducer based on the electron tunneling phenomenon. The tunnel sensor is
sensitive to movements barely larger than a femtometer (10^-15 m), and has
resulted in development of a suite of microinstruments which include pneumatic
infrared sensors, compass-needle magnetometers, and hydrophones for
oceanographic applications. In a related activity, Dr. Kaiser co-invented a
high sensitivity capacitance transducer for seismometry applications.
Microseismometers based on this technology are being prepared for Martian and
terrestrial applications. Prior to joining JPL in 1986, Dr. Kaiser was a
Research Scientist for the Ford Motor Company. There his research included the
first observation of surface electronic structure by STM using unique tunnel
spectroscopy techniques. He also performed research on sensor technology
resulting in the development of new automotive sensors and systems.

Kurt Petersen, PhD
Executive Vice President for Technology, Lucas NovaSensor
Dr. Petersen graduated cum laude from the University of California at Berkeley
in 1970 with a Bachelor of Science degree from the Department of Electrical
Engineering. In 1975 He obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. >From 1975 until 1982, Dr. Petersen was a research
staff member at the IBM Research Laboratories in San Jose, California. While at
IBM, he created and headed a research group to study silicon micromachining and
micromechanical devices, and to apply these techniques to microsensors,
microactuators, and other microstructures. His seminal review paper "Silicon as
a Mechanical Material" (IEEE Proceedings, May 1982) was instrumental in
establishing the field of MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS), and is still
the most widely referenced paper in the field. In 1982, Kurt Petersen
co-founded Transensory Devices Inc., the first company dedicated to the
development of advanced silicon micromechanical devices. In 1985, Dr. Peterson,
together with two partners, founded NovaSensor with the purpose of transferring
the new silicon micromachining and micromechanical technologies into commercial
production. He is currently Executive Vice President for Technology at
NovaSensor, where over 5 million sensors/year are produced for the medical,
automotive, industrial, aerospace, and consumer markets. Dr. Petersen has been
very active in committees and conferences in the field. He chaired the 1986
IEEE Conference on Solid State Sensors and the 1989 IEEE Conference on MEMS; he
is technical co-chair of Transducers '93, the International conference on Solid
State Sensors and Actuators, and has been on the steering committee of this
international conference for many years. He is associate editor of the journal
of MEMS, the first joint publication of IEEE and ASME. He has over 60 papers
and presentations in the field of solid-state devices and has been granted 10
patents.

Daily Schedule

Monday (Pister)
    Introduction and Overview

    Fabrication Technologies
        Bulk Micromachining
        Surface Micromachining
        CMOS processing review
    Process Integration
        CMOS pre and post MEMS
        Mixed process
    Unconventional processing techniques
        LIGA, laser, EDM

Tuesday (Pister)

    Sensor, actuator, and mechanism design
        sensors: piezoresistive, capacitive, vacuum tunneling, temperature,
        magnetic/electric field
        actuators: electrostatic, thermal-bimorph, magnetic, off-chip
        mechanisms: rotary and prismatic joints, flexures, hinged 3D structures
    System design
        bandwidth
        feedback control
        communication
    Material properties and performance
        electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties and interactions of
        common MEMS materials

Wednesday Morning (Kaiser)

    Physical limits to microsensor and microinstrument performance
        Introduction: fundamental limits of microsensors and microinstruments
        Sensors for acceleration, pressure, force, and strain
        New measurement principles for microdevices electron tunnel sensor
        advanced capaicitive position sensor fundamental thermal limits for
        microdevices
        combining sensors and actuators for advanced performance
        designing with electrostatic force microactuators feedback control
        design examples: microaccelerometer and microsesimometer
        future directions for microsensor and microinstrument development

Wednesday Afternoon (Petersen)

    Design for Manufacturability
        Micromachined chip itself
        Packaged Component
        System Aspects
    Actual Product Case Studies
        aerospace
        industrial
        medical
        automotive
        consumer

    Future directions and applications