Automated synthesis of fabrication sequence of MEMS components using graph grammars

The design of any MEMS component is subject to stringent manufacturing constraints. The knowledge about these constraints seems to be available to designers who have experienced the complexities of MEMS fabrication. In this thesis, we put forth the idea of automatically generating a fabrication sequence for surface micro-machined MEMS components using the knowledge stored in grammar rules. As an analogy to CAD tools used in mechanical systems, we envision creating a tool which has the Pro-Engineer approach to determining fabrication sequences for a machine tool based on the final part shape. This tool could be an integral addition to the current MEMS design software so that the designers can freely draft devices and then allow an automated process to determine the fabrication sequence. Further, we explain how we have designed the rules to make an expert system by extracting data from the already designed MEMS components. We have also included an example of the generation of the fabrication sequence for five MEMS components.