Software Module helps design microelectromechanical systems.
Press Release Summary:
Offered as add-on to core FEMLAB package, FEMLAB MEMS Module provides application modes optimized for microscale modeling, and separate modes address electrostatics, stresses and strains, piezoelectrics, and electrokinetics. Materials modeling, together with application modes allows user to make feasibility studies, optimize designs, and experiment with different designs and parameters. Model Library provides ready-to-run models that illustrate basic principles.
Original Press Release:
FEMLAB® MEMS Module Offers Unmatched Multiphysics Capabilities in the Design of Microelectromechanical Systems
Specialized application modes that expose the underlying equations along with an easy-to-use graphics interface make the FEMLAB MEMS Module an unusually useful and flexible tool to study the coupled physics that drive the operation of virtually every MEMS device. An extensive Model Library provides ready-to-run models that not only illustrate basic principles but also step through the design of complex real-world devices.
BURLINGTON, MA (November 3, 2004)-One of the most exciting areas of technology to emerge in recent years is MEMS (microelectromechanical systems), where engineers design and build systems with physical dimensions of micrometers. Thanks to the FEMLAB MEMS Module, COMSOL offers a tool unsurpassed by anything on the market, one that allows scientists and engineers to exploit this high-growth field. This module is especially powerful because virtually all MEMS devices involve the coupling of multiple physics phenomena, known as multiphysics, an area where FEMLAB excels.
The MEMS Module works as an add-on to the core FEMLAB package, which itself is an advanced tool for modeling and simulating any physical process you can describe with partial differential equations (PDEs). It comes with a sophisticated CAD editor and high-performance state-of-the-art solvers that address extremely large problems yet quickly yield accurate results. Working in an easy-to-use graphical interface, users choose from several ways to describe their problems in 1D, 2D and 3D. A particular strength of the package is its PDE modeling capability, whereby it can link and solve coupled equations from arbitrary fields. Flexible postprocessing and visualization tools round out the package's extensive capabilities.
The MEMS Module extends these base capabilities by providing application modes optimized for microscale modeling, and separate modes address electrostatics, stresses and strains, piezoelectrics, and electrokinetics. For each application mode users get a customized graphical interface that uncovers the underlying equations so that, without any coding, they can modify the equations or add to them as easily as if working with a pen and paper. The module also provides predefined physical couplings for several application areas including microsensors, microactuators, and microfluidic systems.
Materials modeling, together with the application modes just described, allows users in research, design, engineering, or education to enjoy a number of significant benefits. They can
o make quick feasibility studies
o optimize a design
o experiment with different designs and parameters
o reduce costs by minimizing prototyping.
John Dunec of Venture Products (Palo Alto, CA) is an engineering design consultant who uses FEMLAB to simulate MEMS devices, and he also teaches courses analyzing this technology. He comments, "MEMS devices are very multiphysics oriented, and only in rare cases is a single physics sufficient for an analysis. FEMLAB is a truly multiphysics code. Whichever device I need to simulate, the components are there. And when necessary I can easy add any physics required. Not many other packages that claim to do multiphysics actually handle the interactional complexities of MEMS. They simply don't have the flexibility."
The MEMS Module makes the analysis task straightforward thanks to its convenient application interfaces. "The MEMS world can present unusual challenges," Dunec elaborates. "Traditional stress- and strain-analysis tools frequently can't handle some of the more exotic material properties of MEMS devices such as crystalline-optical or piezoelectric materials. The MEMS Module offers the flexibility to model these along with moving mesh analyses and more. In addition, with new brick and hex meshing we can simulate thin items very efficiently."
Although it's possible to set up a MEMS simulation starting with the basic PDEs or work with the predefined application modes, COMSOL further eases the modeling process and allows scientists to more quickly get results thanks to a Model Library. It consists of both a separate book and a set of roughly two dozen CD-based model files users can load directly into FEMLAB. To assist in the creation of these models, COMSOL enlisted the aid of some leading researchers in the field including Dr. Carl Meinhart of the University of California at Santa Barbara. Additional models have also come from members of the fast-growing FEMLAB users community such as Isabelle Harouche of the University of Manitoba, Canada, who contributed a simulation of a MEMS comb drive that operates a pair of microtweezers.
These models not only explain the physical phenomena that underlie the operation of MEMS devices, they also illustrate the basic techniques for designing and analyzing devices such as sensors, actuators, piezo devices and microfluidic systems. Towards that goal, these models combine electroelastic, thermoelastic, microfluidic and fluid-structural interactions. These extensible models thus serve as a convenient starting point for many design tasks. The book itself contains a section that explains basic MEMS principles, and the documentation for each model elucidates the theory that describes why and how each device or system functions as it does. Thus, this book serves as a valuable reference work in its own right, just as well suited for the classroom as for the R&D laboratory.
System requirements
The MEMS Module requires FEMLAB 3.1, which runs under Windows 98/2000/NT 4.0/XP as well as Linux, Solaris and HP-UX. 64-bit support is available under Linux (running on the AMD64 and Itanium processors), and under UNIX (for the Solaris and HP-UX operating systems). The minimum system configuration is a Pentium processor, 256M bytes of RAM (512M bytes recommended) and an OpenGL-compatible graphics card.
Price and availability
The MEMS Module lists for $2,995, while a single-user perpetual license for FEMLAB 3.1 lists for $6,995 including first-class support and automatic upgrades for 12 months; special academic pricing is available. Production deliveries begin in October 2004. The software will be available from COMSOL as well as through its distributors around the world. Full details about the product and distribution outlets are available on the firm's web site at www.comsol.com.
About COMSOL
COMSOL was founded in 1986 in Stockholm, Sweden, and has grown to include offices in Benelux, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and a US presence with offices in Burlington, MA, and Los Angeles, CA. Additional information about the company is available at www.comsol.com.
