(Invited) Effect of Microfabrication Induced Stresses on the Sensing Characteristics of Dynamic MEMS Devices

Abstract

Residual stresses play an important role in deciding the performance and reliability of MEMS devices. In this work we present one study each of the compressive residual stress induced effects and the tensile residual stress induced effects on the dynamic behavior of MEMS structures. We find that compressive residual stresses can be introduced with reasonable control to obtain 1-D MEMS structures with desired degree of buckling. We also present a case of multilayered suspended plate structure where the presence of residual tensile stress causes the structure to transition from plate behavior to membrane behavior thus significantly changing the characteristics of the structure when used as a sensor. We also present the applicability of residual stress engineering and stress tuning to these MEMS structure.