June 2013 – Page 2

editor's blog archive

MEMS Measurement Standards

June 4, 2013

Consistent with a move towards standards in MEMS, NIST has released two reference chips that fabs can use to cross-check their measurement techniques. There are several critical parameters unique to MEMS, and five of them are captured by this 5-in-1 reference. NIST has done its own measurements, and the idea is to replicate the results they got. The chips are available for sale ($1735), along with the results for comparison.

The five tests covered are:

Young’s modulus
Residual … Read More → "MEMS Measurement Standards"

Building Better Wizards

by Bryon Moyer

June 2, 2013

Wizards are becoming more and more prevalent. Lest you’re concerned that Dumbledore’s relatives are coming to exact revenge, fear not: we speak here of wizards in the GUI (as opposed to gooey) sense. Yes, there are bastions of holdouts that cling to command line interfaces as a measure of their hacker bona fides, but there are solid reasons to like a well-designed wizard.

And “well-designed” is the operative phrase here. You may think of a wizard as no more than a way to simplify processes that could just as effectively be … Read More → "Building Better Wizards"

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