Micromachined integrated shock protection via a self-adaptive nonlinear system

An original design of a self-adaptive nonlinear system (SANS) for shock protection of MEMS is presented here for the first time. The internally integrated passive silicon structure, with increasing amplitudes of shock, realizes nonlinear growth in shock resistance and reveals positive selectivity and compatibility, through three energy dissipation modes. This approach enables a generic batch fabrication requiring no additional processes or excessive area expansion (290μm×320μm for an 8cm×8cm device in this work). The SANS has been verified to provide enhanced shock robustness over conventional shock protective structures, namely the hard stop (~2 times) and the flexible spring stop (~1.5 times).