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Reliability research on micro- and nano-electromechanical systems: a review

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Abstract

Research on micro/nano-electro-mechanical system (MEMS/NEMS) reliability is of crucial importance, due to the fact that we are facing an era in which MEMS and emerging NEMS are expected to have a major impact on our lives. Over the last decade, significant efforts have gone into the reliability study of MEMS/NEMS. Failure roots in micro- and nano-scales can be addressed by mechanical, electrical, chemical, thermal factors, or combinations of them, which can occur during different manufacturing and post-manufacturing phases. This paper reviews and integrates the reliability issues of MEMS and NEMS in different phases of their life cycles including design, manufacturing, logistics, and operation. This paper surveys the common failure modes and mechanisms (i.e., wear, degradation, adhesion, stiction, deformation, packaging, contamination, and electrical failure modes), the reliability aspects of design and manufacturing, as well as reliability evaluation and testing techniques for MEMS/NEMS. An extensive collection of papers were selected and integrated to cover various studies in this area, in order to provide an intuition and insight for researchers who are interested in reliability research of MEMS/NEMS. Systematic literature search shows the lack of research in system-level and probabilistic reliability analysis for MEMS/NEMS.

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  1. Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, TX, 77204, USA

    Ali Arab & Qianmei Feng

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Arab, A., Feng, Q. Reliability research on micro- and nano-electromechanical systems: a review. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 74, 1679–1690 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-014-6095-x

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