Analysis of failure sources in surface-micromachined MEMS

The effect of vertical stiction, foreign particles, and etch variation on the resonant frequency of a surface-micromachined resonator and accelerometer are presented. For each device, it is shown that misbehaviors resulting from different failure sources can overlap, exhibit dominance and combine to create behavior masking and construction. Such an analysis is essential for developing test and diagnosis methodologies for surface-micromachined MEMS.

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