MEMS reliability: metrology set-up for investigation of fatigue causes

This paper deals with the investigation of the fatigue causes for polycrystalline structural layers. Metrology is set-up to understand the fatigue phenomenon for polycrystalline materials by targeting the failure mechanisms causes and locations. The tested structures are clamped-clamped beams. It is shown that fatigue is caused by grain modifications near microbridge clamped-ends.