Strength And Reliability Of MEMS And Microcomponents

摘要

Strength and reliability are crucial concerns for MEMS development. Strength is mostly refereed to materials intrinsic stress bear ability. Higher strength is always favored if the material is used for fabricating MEMS subjecting to forces. It has proven that material strength at microscale domain is largely different from those of macro domain. The strength data of most MEMS materials are lacking due to the difficulties in handling such small samples to conduct strength test correctively. On the other hand, MEMS reliability is referred to anti-failure ability of MEMS subject repeated exposure to in-use environment conditions. The most often occurred reliability problems are surface contact induced failure such as stiction/friction and wear, fatigue if use other materials than silicon, etc. This paper will address testing of MEMS materials strength and friction in microscale.