Research partners (description)

Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT)

Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT) has 3100 employees and it is divided into nine research institutes. Microelectronics is one of the four research units in the research institute VTT Electronics. VTT Electronics has about 320 employees and the unit of Microelectronics has about 90 employees from which 60 scientist and 30 technical and administrative staff. The total budget of VTT in 1999 was 1194 MFIM (201 MEURO) and the total budget of the Microelectronics was in 2000 60 MFIM (10.1 MEURO) of which two thirds came from contract research.

VTT Microelectronics is a research institute with large industrial facilities. It has an 1100 m² class 10 clean room in its use. An expansion that doubles the clean room area, is under construction in co-operation with Helsinki University of Technology. Microelectronics unit has five research groups and an administrative section including office services and clean room services. The research groups are working within following areas: Integrated circuits, Silicon systems, Microsystems Integrated optics and Materials & packaging.

VTT Microelectronics has a profound expertise in the field of integrated circuits and Microsystems. Its research on Microsystems and sensors is geared to silicon-based technologies. Long term research on silicon and micro-strip radiation detectors, optical sensors and SQUID magnetic sensors has also resulted in small-scale production of these components. VTT Electronics/Microelectronics is also an EUROPRACTICE IC Service Alliance Partner, with Silicon analogue interface and RF circuits as its field of expertise.

Integrated circuits research group at VTT Microelectronics, chaired by Markku Aberg, has concentrated on analogue and mixed silicon integrated circuits. The research group is employing 9 research scientists and two research engineers. This research group has designed several industrial and research oriented circuits both with silicon CMOS and Bipolar technologies on a contract basis. Following external Si foundries have been used: AMS, Alcatel Mietec, ES2, VTI, ST and, Charter semiconductors. It has long expertise in sensor interface circuits, ranging from household electronics fire detectors to micro-mechanical microphones and high energy physics elementary particle detectors. In this project they will be responsible for final design and processing and testing the chips, interfaces and prototypes.

Design and measurement facilities

For designing integrated circuits Microelectronics unit is using analogue and digital design tools of Mentor version 8: schematic capture, simulators, verification tool set (DRC, LVS) and layout and CADENCE version 4 - schematic editor, layout LVS and DRC verification and parameter extractor. The design system runs in SUN workstations. The simulation programs in use are APLAC (a versatile RF-circuit simulator developed at the Helsinki University of Technology), Silvaco SmartSPICE (together with parameter extractor UTMOST and device & process simulator ATLAS & ATHENA), HSPICE, Mentor ACCUSIM & ELDO.

The measurement system at VTT Microelectronics is capable for DC and AC type characterisation of low voltage devices and circuits up to 30 GHz. For prototyping and testing control ASIC sub-blocks the VTT Electronics prototyping 0.5 ?m ft 25 GHz BiCMOS process can be used.


The responsible person is Dr Markku Aberg