A Systematic Approach Towards Reproducibility and Tracking of MEMS Process Development

摘要

Today data and measurement results derived from simulations, tests or measurements during Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and deep-submicron process development are usually kept informally and non-systematically on paper, in Excel sheets or merely in the minds of process engineers. Hence these research and development (R&D) results are hardly accessible or re-usable in future process development projects nor is the initial development effort reproducible or transparent. This paper presents and proposes a systematic approach, realized in a software system, to tackle such insufficiencies of the current R&D practice. The approach and the system assists and supports the process engineer in keeping track of the current developments as well as structuring the storage and keeping the history of the development efforts. The system enables reproducibility by allowing the process engineers to comment, discuss, and conclude etc. on development results. These results are stored in a manner that enables correlation of one result with another, including development artefacts (all kinds of inspection, measurement, test, etc results, literature, etc.) and tracking information. Together with flexible search and retrieval means the system allows the flexible retrieval of historical data preventing repetition of the same efforts.