Accelerated life time estimation of electrostatic microactuators

Author

Caillard, B. ; Mita, Y. ; Fukuta, Y. ; Shibata, T. ; Fujita, H.

Author_Institution

LIMMS, Univ. Tokyo/IIS/CNRS, Tokyo, Japan

fYear

2005

fDate

4-7 April 2005

Firstpage

101

Lastpage

105

Abstract

There is an absolute need of accelerated life time measurement for MEMS actuators. In this paper, a simple method is proposed. It relies on very low frequency electrical detection of the failures and on high voltage testing, since a relationship between mean time before failure and driving voltage is proved. A time gain factor of 20 is reached with test structures used in real applications. An experimental set-up is described and results obtained with electrostatic microactuators with parallel capacitances made using deep RIE etching on SOI wafers are shown.

Keywords

capacitance; electrostatic actuators; high-voltage techniques; life testing; silicon-on-insulator; sputter etching; MEMS actuators; SOI wafers; accelerated life time measurement; deep RIE etching; driving voltage; electrostatic microactuators; failures; high voltage testing; mean time before failure; parallel capacitances; very low frequency electrical detection; Acceleration; Actuators; Electrostatics; Frequency; Life estimation; Microactuators; Micromechanical devices; Testing; Time measurement; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microelectronic Test Structures, 2005. ICMTS 2005. Proceedings of the 2005 International Conference on

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8855-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICMTS.2005.1452234

Filename

1452234