Title: Process development support environment: a tool suite to engineer manufacturing sequences

Authors: Dirk Ortloff, Jens Popp, Thilo Schmidt, Rainer Bruck

Addresses: Process Relations GmbH, Emil-Figge-Str. 76-80, Dortmund 44227, Germany. ' Process Relations GmbH, Emil-Figge-Str. 76-80, Dortmund 44227, Germany ' Institute of Microsystem Technologies, University of Siegen, Holderlinstr. 3, Siegen 57068, Germany. ' Institute of Microsystem Technologies, University of Siegen, Holderlinstr. 3, Siegen 57068, Germany

Abstract: This paper investigates the practices for developing manufacturing processes in the high tech industries and specifically in the field of MEMS based on semiconductor thin film process technologies. For this purpose the current development practices are described, issues arising from the current practices are extracted and ways to approach these issues are highlighted. Solutions to several of these problems are provided by a software tool suite called XperiDesk. This suite results from a three year project funded by the European Commission under the 6th framework programme. The project called PROMENADE European Commission resulted in prototype software tools which are currently in a maturity phase and will be released as XperiDesk product suite.

Keywords: process development; silicon thin films; development practice; support systems; semiconductors; MEMS; microelectromechanical systems; software tools.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCMSSE.2009.027489

International Journal of Computational Materials Science and Surface Engineering, 2009 Vol.2 No.3/4, pp.312 - 334

Published online: 28 Jul 2009 *

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