MEMS form the technological core of the Sensor Web application, as well as a 5-10 billion dollar and rapidly growing commercial industry. The continued rapid development of new devices and their applications depends on having adequate CAD tools for the design, simulation, measurement, and evaluation of MEMS devices. Current practice (back of the envelope calculations, or very detailed finite element models of small parts of large systems) is inadequate for current and future needs. There is no robust and widely available system as there is in the integrated circuit world with SPICE.
SUGAR is our system level solution to this problem. Our goal is to close the design loop by enabling design, simulation, fabrication, comparison of measurement with simulation or other data, diagnostics, and then re-design. We are also developing design synthesis tools built on SUGAR to design MEMS devices with optimized configurations, designed to meet one or more performance objectives. All our software will be freely available. Measurements will be done by a variety of devices at Berkeley and eventually other sites, all connected by the Internet, and supporting a variety of outside users. The measurement devices are capable of producing nanometer resolution realtime 3D images of operating MEMS devices, as well as simpler measurements. The model is that a user would be able to use all the facilities (simulation, measurement, and data repositories) remotely at high speed. Speed is important because of the enormous measurement files produced and the ability to control and observe the devices being measured in real-time.