The experimental study of electrical breakdown in vacuum encapsulated MEMS devices with deep submicron capacitive electrode gaps
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Matthews, Justin Ellis
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Abstract
This thesis will present for the first time an experimental study of the DC breakdown voltage in vacuum encapsulated capacitive MEMS devices with sub-micrometer capacitive gaps, ranging between 150-250 nanometers. Breakdown of airgaps plays a major role in MEMS device reliability when operating at high DC voltages and high-power levels. Our work mainly focuses on the observation of physical breakdown effects on wafer-level encapsulated MEMS devices incorporating bulk acoustic wave (BAW) capacitive square and disk resonators fabricated using the HARPSS process. The characterization work involves measurement of breakdown voltage as a function of gap size and vacuum pressure.
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2023-05-23
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