From Proven Design to Volume Fabrication: A MEMS Foundry Perspective on Sensing Devices

A device demonstrated in a research setting is not yet a design that a foundry can fabricate the same way on every wafer at volume. Whether that device ever gets built at production volume depends heavily on closing the gap between a proven design and a repeatable fabrication process.

This talk comes from the point of view of a precision Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) foundry that fabricates devices for a variety of customers, including those in sensing and photonics. Its role includes the process flow and materials definition, fabrication, and metrology that confirms fabricated structures match the design. From there, the customer takes the wafers into device characterization, with continued foundry support for any issues identified as process-related.

Rauscher explores how a MEMS foundry turns design into a qualified process flow, and the accompanying challenges including material selection, process integration across electrical, optical and mechanical layers, moving a process to a larger wafer size, holding tolerances as we increase volume, and the metrology we use to confirm dimensions and film parameters.

The goal of this presentation is to give the audience a clear picture of what a foundry takes on, and where the customer picks up, in getting a sensing device from a design to production.

About the presenter
Dr. Scott Rauscher brings nearly two decades of MEMS, advanced packaging, and photonics experience spanning U.S. government research and the defense industry, with more than 15 years focused on design and multi-physics modeling from concept through prototype to programs of record. Most recently at L3Harris Technologies, he led process architecture, technology strategy, and a microfabrication and design engineering team, creating a critical device and building it into an $80M+ portfolio.

His background includes service as a MEMS device inventor and microfabrication lead across the Naval Surface Warfare Center and U.S. Army Research Laboratory. Rauscher holds more than 10 patents issued and pending and has served on the board of the Florida Semiconductor Institute, as chair of the Quantum Working Group for the MMEC consortium, on the National Economic Infrastructure Market Committee, and in photonics industry advisory roles. He holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland.