SAMPLE (Sandia agile MEMS prototyping, layout tools, and education)

The SAMPLE (Sandia Agile MEMS Prototyping, Layout tools, and Education) service makes Sandia's state-of-the-art surface-micromachining fabrication process, known as SUMMiT, available to US industry for the first time. The service provides a short course and customized computer-aided design (CAD) tools to assist customers in designing micromachine prototypes to be fabricated in SUMMiT. Frequent small-scale manufacturing runs then provide SAMPLE designers with hundreds of sophisticated MEMS (MicroElectroMechanical Systems) chips. SUMMiT (Sandia Ultra-planar, Multi-level MEMS Technology) offers unique surface-micromachining capabilities, including four levels of polycrystalline silicon (including the ground layer), flanged hubs, substrate contacts, one-micron design rules, and chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) planarization. This paper describes the SUMMiT process, design tools, and other information relevant to the SAMPLE service and SUMMiT process.