Todd F. Miller

Design evaluation of shock induced failure mechanisms of MEMS by correlation of numerical and experimental results

The paper presents a novel approach to evaluate and improve MEMS reliability even during design phase of new devices. Firstly, the shock induced failure mechanisms of breakage and stiction are characterized by test structures. The obtained results in terms of maximum rated loads are compared to acting loads during the actual mechanical shock, which are calculated by a numerical impact model. The model is based on the modal superposition approach and can be applied to arbitrary designs. It accounts for impacts at flexible travel stops including stiction as well as for large structural deflections leading to strongly nonlinear squeeze damping.

The influence of packaging technologies on the performance of inertial MEMS sensors

The paper is focused on the influence of packaging technologies on the performance of inertial MEMS sensors. System simulations of MEMS are vital to evaluate and optimize the interplay of transducer cells with the sensor electronics. Special emphasis must be put on packaging aspects in order to assess the impact of environmental and operating conditions on functional parameters as capacitance offset or loss of sensitivity affected by thermal-mechanical stress or structural deformation. This article presents modern reduced order modeling technologies which extract fast and accurate behavioral models from a series of finite element runs which can directly be used in Matlab/Simulink or Verilog-A for system design.