Advanced moDelling of MEMS In Routine and Extreme

ongoing

Key sensors for advanced and everyday technology, such as smartphones and drones, rely on inertial micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). In some extreme applications they cannot yet be used, in others they cannot be substituted upon failure. Contrarily, in consumer applications they are not exploited to the end of life, in a wasteful planned obsolescence cycle. Advanced moDelling of MEMS In Routine and Extreme (ADMIRE) plans to tackle both problems by disrupting the current design practice that relies on empirical approaches based on phenomenological material properties. ADMIRE proposes a multiscale modelling framework rooted in atomistic simulations, which are cleverly extrapolated to the microscale and interpreted using Machine Learning, all to predict material degradation under a wide range of operating conditions. The result will be a new class of smart constitutive laws that will seamlessly integrate in continuum models to quantify the degradation of MEMS during prolonged use or extreme loads. A key advantage is that the effect of defects, microstructure and loads becomes transparent and mechanistic predictions become possible. Materials, engineering and computer sciences are tightly intertwined in this challenging framework. Its probability of success is maximised by reflecting the same mix in the research team and by teaming up with a world leader company in MEMS technology. Impacts will propagate to society, supporting the eco-efficient reusability paradigm, to technology, opening new applications for MEMS, to economic growth, boosting the strategic market of advanced sensors that is already on the rise, and to the leadership of Europe in this competitive field.