Packaging and reliability issues in microelectromechanical systems

Packaging of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) strongly affects the device performances. It is the core technology for the advancement of MEMS and is recognized as the next manufacturers challenge for the forthcoming years due to the growing market and stricter requirements. There is a vast diversity of applications and the most of MEMS packaging challenges are application dependent. It is the objective of this paper to review and discuss the most common MEMS packaging challenges. For that reason, five case studies on MEMS pressure sensors, MEMS accelerometers, RF MEMS, MOEMS and BioMEMS are presented for an in-depth illustration.