Continued demand for higher accuracy, higher precision, lower cost, and more durable components, devices, systems, processes, etc., for various applications, places unprecedented needs on information systems to sense, compute, and act in real-time and on location. These needs can be uniquely satisfied by MEMS because they combine the advantages of miniaturisation, multiple components, and microelectronics to produce integrated optoelectro-mechanical systems.
MEMS consist of many structures fabricated in the same environment by preassembly and batch process.
In the field of MEMS testing the difficulty is based on the inability to use existing techniques for online monitoring and for control of fabrication processes. There is a great need for a technique that will permit evaluation and quality assurance of the actual finished product. Therefore, the project aims at improving this situation for industry by development and demonstration of new optical techniques for MEMS characterization on a wide scale. The overarching goal of the proposed IMS project is to elaborate and demonstrate flexible optical methodologies, which are specific for MEMS characterization with respect to materials properties, component behaviour, and operation monitoring. To this aim, inter-regionally shared workpackages have been set up that will establish optical techniques and corresponding evaluation methodologies for testing, characterization, and durability analysis of MEMS devices.