Hi all,
In my research, we frequently need to do full wave E&M simulations of planar microwave frequency chip designs, based on GDSII files that specify metal plane geometries on our chip. For this, we typically now use tools such as Sonnet and Ansys HFSS (and sometimes Comsol). But right now, we have no code for automating our workflow with these tools. And, the licensing restrictions of these tools makes our workflow complicated and annoying. (And I am a open source enthusiast 
)
For these reasons, I am looking around to see if there are any open source packages that we could consider trying to interface to, and was wondering if Fenics is maybe what Iām after.
The workflow we are after is something like what is done with Qiskit Metal and HFSS:
Our Some of our requirements for this:
- Import GDS patterns that contain layers defining the 2D patterns of the metal films and perhaps additional layers specifying the positions of ports, and of lumped elements such as inductors (which we use to model Josephson junctions in our circuits)
- Specify ports, grounds, surface impedances, dielectric slabs, etc programatically
- Run eigenmode (and maybe swept frequency response) simulations and save results
- Ideally run in a linux environment to enable deployment on our Jupyterhub
Does anyone know if this is something Fenics could do? In particular, things like including surface impedance parameters and lumped-element connections between metals layers are quite crucial.
If there is any demo code showing something even close to the above, I would be very interested in having a look. And if things look promising, I could see if I could find some funding to support some coding work.
Curious to hear what people think!
Cheers,
Gary
https://steelelab.tudelft.nl/