ELECTROMECHANICAL RELIABILITY TESTING OF THREE-AXIAL SILICON FORCE SENSORS

S. Spinner (1, 2) , J. Bartholomeyczik (1) , B. Becker (2) , M. Doelle (1) , O. Paul (1) , I. Polian (2) , R. Roth (2) , K. Seitz (3) , P. Ruther (1)

1 IMTEK - Department of Microsystems Engineering [Freiburg]
2 Institute for Computer Science
3 Carl Zeiss SMT AG

This paper reports on the systematic electromechanicalcharacterization of a new three-axial force sensor used in di-mensional metrology of micro components. The siliconbased sensor system consists of piezoresistive mechanicalstress transducers integrated in thin membrane hinges sup-porting a suspended flexible cross structure. The mechani-cal behavior of the fragile micromechanical structure isanalyzed for both static and dynamic load cases. This workdemonstrates that the silicon microstructure withstands stat-ic forces of 1.16N applied orthogonally to the front-side ofthe structure. A statistical Weibull analysis of the measureddata shows that these values are significantly reduced if thenormal force is applied to the back of the sensor. Improve-ments of the sensor system design for future developmentcycles are derived from the measurement results.

Mots clés: MEMS; Reliability; 3D Force Sensing

Domaines: Architectures Matérielles [cs.AR]

S. Spinner, J. Bartholomeyczik, B. Becker, M. Doelle, O. Paul, et al.. ELECTROMECHANICAL RELIABILITY TESTING OF THREE-AXIAL SILICON FORCE SENSORS. DTIP 2006, Apr 2006, Stresa, Lago Maggiore, Italy. 6 p. ⟨hal-00189261⟩