Reliability Of Microelectromechanical Systems Research Articles

Materials issues in microelectromechanical devices: science, engineering, manufacturability and reliability

MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) technology offers considerable potential throughout the manufacturing sector, because of certain intrinsic advantages in terms of low cost, reliability, and small size. Relatively simple MEMS are used in applications ranging from automobile air bag sensors to electronic games. Considerably more complex devices have been designed for defense applications, for which government funding is available; however, the fledgling industry suffers from insufficient knowledge of materials physics at micrometer size and from the fact that currently commercialized MEMS devices are designed for specialized and rather disparate purposes, do not have a broad user base, and therefore have not generated industry standards or the design and process software that would be built upon those industry standards. In addition to industry standards, further advances in MEMS technology require a more complete understanding of the physics underlying performance and reliability. The first half of this paper reviews general issues related to fabrication and commercialization; the second half addresses the technical materials issues that relate to MEMS performance and reliability.

Superhard self-lubricating AlMgB14 films for microelectromechanical devices

Performance and reliability of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) components can be enhanced dramatically through the incorporation of protective thin-film coatings. Current-generation MEMS devices prepared by the lithographie-galvanoformung-abformung (LIGA) technique employ transition metals such as Ni, Cu, Fe, or alloys thereof, and hence lack stability in oxidizing, corrosive, and/or high-temperature environments. Fabrication of a superhard self-lubricating coating based on a ternary boride compound AlMgB14 described in this letter has great potential in protective coating technology for LIGA microdevices. Nanoindentation tests show that the hardness of AlMgB14 films prepared by pulsed laser deposition ranges from 45 GPa to 51 GPa, when deposited at room temperature and 573 K, respectively. Extremely low friction coefficients of 0.04–0.05, which are thought to result from a self-lubricating effect, have also been confirmed by nanoscratch tests on the AlMgB14 films. Transmission electron microscopy studies show that the as-deposited films are amorphous, regardless of substrate temperature; however, analysis of Fourier transform infrared spectra suggests that the higher substrate temperature facilitates the formation of the B12 icosahedral framework, therefore leading to the higher hardness.

MEMS reliability from a failure mechanisms perspective

Over the last few years, considerable effort has gone into the study of the failure mechanisms and reliability of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS). Although still very incomplete, our knowledge of the reliability issues relevant to MEMS is growing. This paper provides an overview of MEMS failure mechanisms that are commonly encountered. It focuses on the reliability issues of micro-scale devices, but, for some issues, the field of their macroscopic counterparts is also briefly touched. The paper discusses generic structures used in MEMS, stiction, creep, fatigue, brittle fatigue in silicon, wear, dielectric charging, breakdown, contamination and packaging.

Atomic-layer deposition of wear-resistant coatings for microelectromechanical devices

Friction and wear are major concerns in the performance and reliability of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices employing sliding contacts. While many tribological coating materials are available, most traditional surface coating processes are unable to apply conformal coatings to the high aspect ratio (height/width) structures typical of MEMS devices. We demonstrate that thin, conformal, wear-resistant coatings can be applied to Si surface-micromachined structures by atomic-layer deposition (ALD). For this demonstration, we apply 10-nm-thick films of Al2O3 using a binary reaction sequence with precursors of trimethyl aluminum and water. Deposition is carried out in a viscous flow reactor at 1 Torr and 168 °C, with N2 as a carrier gas. Cross-section transmission electron microscopy analysis shows that films are uniform to within 5% on MEMS device structures with aspect ratio ranging from 0 to >100. Films are stoichiometric Al2O3, with no evidence of contamination from other species, and are amorphous. Preliminary friction and wear data show that ALD films have promising properties for application to MEMS devices.

OS06W0426 MEMS device characterization for repeated cyclic operation

This paper deals with characterization of micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) under cyclic loading; such characterization is essential to confirm the reliability of MEMS in practical applications. Examples include torsion beams supporting a micro mirror of an optical matrix switch, a cantilever with a vertical micro mirror of an optical bypass switch, and thermo-elastically deformed 3-D structures. Those devices are made of poly or single-crystal silicon. Typical life time of these devices exceeded a few tens of million cycles.

The reliability of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) in shock environments

As a first step toward formulating guidelines for the design of dynamically reliable MEMS, we analyze the mechanical response of, and formulate failure criteria for, a large class of shock loaded microsystems. MEMS are modeled as microstructures attached to elastic substrates, and the shocks are modeled as pulses of acceleration applied to the substrate over a finite time duration. The relevant time scales in the analysis are the acoustic transit time, the time period of vibrations, and the duration of the applied shock load. For many MEMS structures and shock loads (with durations in the range 50-5000 /spl mu/s), the substrates respond as rigid bodies and are expected to be immune to stress-wave-induced damage. Time-domain criteria, obtained to distinguish between the impulse, resonant, and quasistatic responses of the microstructures, correlate well with the experimentally observed responses of different MEMS devices. The formulation of displacement-based and stress-based failure criteria is discussed, along with their sensitivity to the applied strain rate. A case study, in which these results are applied to evaluate the reliability of a packaged surface-micromachined device, is presented.

Designing for MEMS Reliability

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices are being manufactured in the hundreds of millions and are widely deployed for pressure sensor, accelerometer, display, and printing applications. This suggests customer confidence in the longterm reliability of MEMS (also known as microsystems or micromachines) under diverse stringent conditions.

Simulation and experiments on friction and wear of diamond: a material for MEMS and NEMS application

To date most of the microelectromechanical system (MEMS) devices have been based on silicon. This is due to the technological know-how accumulated on the manipulation, machining and manufacturing of silicon. However, only very few devices involve moving parts. This is because of the rapid wear arising from high friction in these silicon-based systems. Recent tribometric experiments carried out by Gardos on silicon and polycrystalline diamond (PCD) show that this rapid wear is caused by a variety of factors, related both to surface chemistry and cohesive energy density of these likely MEMS bearing materials. In particular, the 1.8-times stronger C-C bond in diamond as opposed to the Si-Si bond in the bulk translates into a more than 104-times difference in wear rates, even though the difference in flexural strength is only 20-times, in hardness 10-times and in fracture toughness 5-times. It also has been shown that the wear rates of silicon and PCD are controlled by high-friction-induced surface cracking, and the friction is controlled by the number of dangling, reconstructed or adsorbate-passivated surface bonds. Therefore, theoretical and tribological characterization of Si and PCD surfaces is essential prior to device fabrication to assure reliable MEMS operation under various atmospheric environments, especially at elevated temperatures. As a part of the rational design and manufacturing of MEMS devices containing moving mechanical assemblies (MEMS-MMA) and especially nanoelectromechanical devices (NEMS), theory and simulation can play an important role. Predicting system properties such as friction and wear, and materials properties such as thermal conductivity is of critical importance for materials and components to be used in MEMS-MMAs. In this paper, we present theoretical studies of friction and wear processes on diamond surfaces using a steady state molecular dynamics method. We studied the atomic friction of the diamond-(100) surface using an extended bond-order-dependent potential for hydrocarbon systems. Unlike traditional empirical potentials, bond order potentials can simulate bond breaking and formation processes. Therefore, it is a natural choice to study surface dynamics under friction and wear. In order to calculate the material properties correctly, we have established a consistent approach to incorporate non-bond interactions into the bond order potentials. We have also developed an easy-to-use software to evaluate the atomic-level friction coefficient for an arbitrary system, and interfaced it into a third-party graphical software.