Résumé
With the rapid development of MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) technology, there is a demand for layout synthesis tools which can directly translate high-level design specifications into valid MEMS device layout. These synthesis tools can help designers to rapidly explore the entire design space given user-specified constraints, and assist in building complex arrayed MEMS devices by quick design of individual cells. Usually in MEMS design, designers need to decide on a certain topology, make trade-offs between performance specifications and assign values to a set of variables which can represent a valid design. Physical layout is then generated from the set of variables. Usually, the large number of variables and the nonlinearity of the equations which link these variables makes the optimum trade-off between specifications very difficult to find by hand calculations. In this paper, we extend the synthesis techniques to be able to generate automatically an optimized MEMS component from its behavioral description. The resulting MEMS structure should match in performance, compatibility, and right interfacing with the electronic circuitry and/or other MEMS devices connected around. A thermopile design fabricated with AMS 0.6 micrometer bulk micromachining technology is being used to demonstrate the ability of such synthesis approach.