Material Fatigue and Reliability of MEMS Accelerometers
Abstract
MEMS (microelectromechanical system) reliability has been a very important issue, especially for safety-critical applications. Due to the diversity and multiple energy domains involved, MEMS devices are vulnerable to various failure mechanisms. MEMS reliability under different failure mechanisms should be analyzed separately. Since most of MEMS devices contain movable parts, material fatigue and aging under long-term repeated cycling load may lead to potential device failure, which in turn degrades the device reliability. In this paper, the reliability of poly-silicon MEMS comb accelerometers under material fatigue failure mechanism is analyzed. Based on ANSYS stress simulation, the mean-time-to-failure (MTTF) lifetimes and failure rates for both BISR (built-in self-repairable) and non-BISR poly-silicon MEMS comb accelerometers are derived. Simulation results show that the fatigue lifetime of MEMS accelerometers made by poly-silicon material can be good enough for general purpose applications. However, for some "weak" devices with certain structure defects, the material fatigue and aging may become potential threats. Compared to non-BISR design, BISR MEMS accelerometer demonstrates effective reliability improvement due to redundancy repair. MEMS reliability under material fatigue for other MEMS materials will be further studied in the future.
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Material fatigue and aging under long-term repeated cycling load may cause potential device failure in MEMS devices, decreasing reliability.
“However, because most of MEMS devices contain movable parts, material fatigue and aging under long-term repeated cycling load may cause potential device failure, which in turn decreases the device reliability [56].”
From Neurological Tremor: Sensors, Signal Processing and Emerging Applications (2010) · cites this paper as [56]
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Continuous maintenance and the future – Foundations and technological challenges
Roy, R., Stark, R., Tracht, K., Takata, S., & Mori, M. (2016) · CIRP Annals · doi:10.1016/j.cirp.2016.06.006 · Cited by 309 · see citing works
Neurological Tremor: Sensors, Signal Processing and Emerging Applications
Grimaldi, G., & Manto, M. (2010) · Sensors · doi:10.3390/s100201399 · Cited by 138 · see citing works
“However, because most of MEMS devices contain movable parts, material fatigue and aging under long-term repeated cycling load may cause potential device failure, which in turn decreases the device reliability [56].”
Background
- Authors
- Xiong, X., Wu, Y.-L., & Jone, W.-B.
- Affiliations
- University of Bridgeport (US)
- Chinese University of Hong Kong (HK)
- University of Cincinnati (US)
- Venue
- 2008 IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance of VLSI Systems
- Publisher
- IEEE
- Published
- 2008-10
- Pages
- 314-322
- ISSN
- 1550-5774 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2115088314
- Cited by
- 33
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 1 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 1 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 3.32
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Proceedings (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Advanced MEMS and NEMS Technologies
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality › Reliability and Maintenance Optimization
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Integrated Circuits and Semiconductor Failure Analysis
- Keywords
- MEMS accelerometer, material fatigue, device reliability, polycrystalline silicon, mean time to failure, failure rate, aging materials, stress simulation, structural defects
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