GENERAL COURSE INFORMATION

BRIEF SUMMARY

The course is designed as a “hands-on” project course for students who would like to deepen their understanding of nano/microelectromachnical systems (NEMS/MEMS). The students will go through a complete microsystem engineering cycle by actively designing, fabricating, characterizing and investigating failure mechanisms of their own microacuator concepts.

This course is given annually, in the 2nd period of every autumn term at KTH (HT-P2; typically last week of October to second week of December).

In recent course runs, the students had to develop the following microsystems:

• 2010: micro-optical switch for fiber-optic telecommunication networks
• 2011: micro-optical switch for fiber-optic telecommunication networks
• 2012: micro-gripper for manipulating cells

Here a Promotional Flyer of the course of 2012

Targeted student group and pre-requirements:

The course is targeting MSc level students, preferably with background in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or Engineering Physics. Pre-knowledge in microsystems, nanotechnology, or semiconductor technology, is advantageous for some course parts, for instance the fabrication, but not necessary at all. Typically, less than 25% of the students have taken the EK2350 Microsystem Technology course. General understanding of physics and curiosity for the application of physical effects on a micro/nano-scale, is the best starting point for designing your own moving microsystem! Microsystem engineering is a very interdisciplinary topic, and the students in previous years came from different MSc programms including microelectronics, nanotechnology, electrophysics, engineering physics, systems&control&robotics, system-on-chip, vehicle engineering. The students will learn how to use state of the art simulation and design tools; no previous experience on FEM or CAD tools is required. Typically 20-30% of the students are PhD students, who are working in separate teams. Under certain circumstances, students may create and carry out their own task in the world of microsystem technology.

Student feedback of previous year's course evaluation:

• 2011, 14 students took the course, of which 4 were PhD students.
  30% of the MSc students consider the course as among the top 10% of KTH's courses, and 70% of the MSc students consider the course as among the top 25% of KTH's courses.
• 2012, 10 students took the course, of which 4 were PhD students.
  50% of the MSc students consider the course as among the top 10% of KTH's courses, and 83% of the MSc students consider the course as among the top 25% of KTH's courses. 100% of the MSc students would take this course again.

Course language: English.

Course coordinator: Assoc.-Prof. Joachim Oberhammer, KTH School of electrical Engineering, Microsystem Technology Laboratory.

Supervision: The progress of the project work is supervised by the course responsible during scheduled weakly review meetings and unscheduled meetings upon request. Additionally, 2 PhD students tutor the course participants during the design phase, 1 PhD student tutors during the fabrication phase, and 1 PhD student tutors during the evaluation phase.

Place of the course events: The first (compulsory!) meeting and the final project presentations are held in lecture halls as specified in the course schedule (see link to the right), the other meetings, lectures, review meetings, and the design work is carried out in the students lab at KTH's downtown campus, Osquldas väg 10, 2nd floor, room A:213. Students get unrestricted (day&night&weekends) access to that lab during the project work. The fabrication is done in KTH's cleanroom laboratory in Kista (Isafjordsgatan 22-24). The evaluation lab is done at the Microsystem Technology Laboratory at the KTH downtown campus, Osquldas väg 10, 5th floor.

Official course description: Original course description in the KTH databas, last update 2010. (information on the course on KTH Social, i.e. this page, is more frequently updated)

Course office for students: STEX (Osquldas väg 10, ground floor). (comment: not utilized for this course except for handling the course and final mark registration)

Course content: The course consists of three introductory lectures (the dates for the lectures 2 and 3 will be decided at the first meeting) followed by the course work, which is framed by weekly progress meetings with the course responsible and his teaching assistants. The students will go through a complete microsystem engineering cycle, i.e. the goal of the course is that the students are able

1. to conceptualize, simulate, and design their own microsystem devices using state-of-the-art simulation and CAD tools,
2. to fabricate the devices in a state-of-the-art 200-mm wafer semiconductor clean-room laboratory, and
3. to characterize their devices and to analyse their failure mechanisms as well as propose design improvements.

The course starts with lectures introducing the student to MEMS design tools, and providing them with specifications of the real-world problems they have to solve (week 1). Then, the students will work in groups of 2–3, develop device concepts, and verify these using state-of-the art FEM simulation tools, and then design the devices with CAD software (no previous knowledge on FEM or CAD software is required for the course) (weeks 2-4). In the next step, the students will fabricate their own devices with state-of-the-art micromachining/semiconductor manufacturing tools in the the KTH clean-room laboratory (week 5-6). Afterwards, the students will evaluate their devices by characterizing them with various test setups to find out which of their designs has best performance according to the given specifications (week 6-7). In the final step, the students will analyze the failure mechanisms of their devices, and have to propose design improvements for a potential next development cycle (week 7).

Examination: The student’s final grade in the course will be based on:

• attendance at the compulsory introductory lectures (pass/fail criteria)
• project work: overall evaluation of the project work of the project team as a whole, including the project report and the final project presentation to a critical audience. Individual adjustments might be done if the group members' performance was inhomogeneous. Criteria for the evaluation of project work, report, and presentation, as well as guidelines for report and presentation will be communicated to the students.
• if the project work is not carried out balanced between the group members, it might be necessary to adjust individual marks within the same group (this was necessary for 2 groups in 2011, but not in 2012).

The course is worth 7.5 ECTS points; grading will be on a scale from A to F, with A being the highest mark and E being the lowest mark for passing the course, and F being a fail.

Course material: Extensive course material, in particular lecture notes, lab manuals, software tutorials, are distributed for assisting the students during their work. For course material, schedule, etc. for the current academic year click at the items of the respective year in the menu to the right. Most items are only visible if you are logged-in/registered to this course.

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