A Through-life Approach to Developing High-performance Microsystems

This paper presents an assessment of the feasibility of a through-life approach for the development of high performance microsystems (HPMs) – microsystems, or microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) designed to operate in extreme conditions. It introduces HPMs, and their applications and presents reliability as the main through-life challenge to their market growth. It characterizes reliability challenges in HPMs and details the current understanding of failure modes in HPMs. It describes progress in failure prediction in HPMs and discusses future challenges. Finally, it summarizes why a general Design for Reliability approach would be advantageous for HPMs and summarizes progress in implementing such an approach.