ITR/SY: Computational Design of Mixed-Technology Systems

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

The objective of this research is to develop new computational design tools with rigorous experimental validation to enable design and development of distributed, heterogeneous mixed-technology systems. Mixed-technology system development requires research on two fronts: The first is the component or the device level and the second is the integration of heterogeneous components at the system level. At the component or the device level, the research will focus on four building-blocks: Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS), Biological Microelectromechanical Systems (Bio-MEMS), Nanoelectromechanical Systems (NEMS) and Biological ion channels integrated with nanoelectronics (nanobioelectronics). Efficient computational design tools integrated with experimental validation will be developed for each of these building blocks. At the system level the research focuses on integration of MEMS and Bio-MEMS with conventional electronics. Device level modeling research will focus on development of new scattered point computational methods for fast, efficient and flexible analysis of micro and nanoscale devices, development of multiscale approaches combining continuum and molecular approaches, development of enhanced continuum models to capture microscopic phenomena, and development of efficient reduced-order modeling approaches for fast dynamic analysis. System level modeling research will focus on development of new algorithms and techniques to integrate various micro-device partial differential equations solvers with the circuit simulator (SPICE3) and development of efficient time stepping schemes with different numerical devices for simulation of the complete system. The experimental effort will focus on development of new fabrication approaches for realizing nanobioelectronics, NEMS and systems level integration of MEMS and Bio-MEMS with conventional electronics.