Micro-tethering for in-process stiction mitigation of highly compliant structures

This work demonstrates, for the first time, a post-fabrication technique for creating highly compliant structures inside a hermetic, wafer-scale encapsulation process. By tethering large, free-moving structures during fabrication this method mitigates in-process stiction by selectively detaching devices post-fabrication. The tethers in this work were attached to differential resonant beam accelerometers (DRBA), and were designed for detachment by two methods: Joule heating and shear stressing. Our results show that the device can be successfully detached by both methods, indicated by the device sensitivity increase from ~100 Hz/g to ~400 Hz/g.