Imec and Coventor combine leading expertise in IC and MEMS design and manufacturing

Building on both organizations’ success with MEMS design and manufacturing, the partnership aims at developing solutions to make MEMS more accessible to both MEMS and IC designers. Process design kits (PDKs) will be developed to improve the efficiency of this MEMS-IC co-design. The kits will target imec’s SiGe MEMS technology that uses a MEMS-last approach, where the MEMS are processed after and on top of the CMOS circuits, enabling a monolithic integration of MEMS devices with the driving and readout electronics on the same die. The SiGe MEMS platform’s flexible and modular approach also allows application-specific tuning and optimization of MEMS layer thicknesses and properties, and the processing of optional functional layers on top of the MEMS devices.
The partnership will leverage Coventor’s background in developing the necessary infrastructure for MEMS design environments. Coventor’s design tools have been production proven on hundreds of MEMS designs over the past 15 years. Recently, Coventor introduced a new product line, MEMS+®, aimed at integrating MEMS design with mainstream IC design environments. And imec has an innovative SiGe MEMS process that allows monolithic integration on top of standard CMOS.

“More and more product developers from a wide range of industries look to integrate MEMS because of their powerful capabilities. Imec is well-positioned to address this market through its CMORE initiative which seeks to expand the scaling of CMOS micro- and nano-devices by adding functions other than logic and memory to chips,” said Rudi Cartuyvels, Vice President Process Technology at imec. “By partnering with Coventor, we gain access to years of production experience and technology for MEMS design, and a breadth of expertise in developing a larger ecosystem for MEMS developers.”
“Coventor’s strategy revolves around the ‘democratization’ of MEMS, which is about eliminating the obstacles and challenges in the way of more widespread adoption of these devices. By applying the talent and resources of one of the world’s most prestigious semiconductor research institutes, our partnership with imec will help do that. Together we can develop more efficient and practical approaches to MEMS development that meet the demanding requirements of markets and applications that have yet to leverage the vast potential of MEMS,” said Mike Jamiolkowski, CEO of Coventor.