Although the margin with regard to other parts of the world is getting smaller, European microsystem technology is still leading and is one of the future economic domains with great potential and impact on almost all areas of technological development. A major reason for this success is the large variety of different microsystem process technologies, as most of the target devices such as MEMS and MOEMS require an application specific fabrication process. To keep and to extend the margin of European microsystem technology the PROMENADE project adds to reproducibility, manageability and time to market issues related to the maintenance of microsystem processes.

Today technology information derived from simulation, tests or measurements is usually kept informally and non-systematically on paper, in Excel sheets or merely in the heads of process engineers and is hence hardly accessible for use in future process development projects. The objectives of the PROMENADE project are to realise a computer-based environment supporting process engineers in creating, verifying, simulating, optimising and maintaining thin film Si processes with predictable characteristics as well as designers of micro devices by offering them a formal interface to constraints from the technological domain and facilitating design for manufacturing.

Special attention will be paid to respect IPR protection issues of users / partners and company specific IPR protection. A major part of the effort will be related to the generation of the simulation environment, implementing the developed empirical and physical models generated by the detailed physical study. Single process step simulations and characterisations as well as simulations of complete process sequences will be available to derive rules forming the foundation for process validation as well as process assessment.