Key Reliability Factors for IC and MEMS Packaging
Abstract During the last decade, research and development of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) has shown a significant promise for a variety of commercial applications including automobile and medical purposes. For example, accelerometers are widely used for air bag in automobile and pressure sensors for various industrial applications. Some of the MEMS devices have potential to become the commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components. While high reliability/harsh environmental applications including aerospace require much more sophisticated technology development, they would achieve significant cost savings if they could utilize COTS components in their systems. This paper reviews the current status of IC and MEMS packaging technology with emphasis on reliability, compares the norm for IC packaging reliability evaluation and identifies challenges for development of reliability methodologies for MEMS, and finally proposes the use of COTS MEMS in order to start generating statistically meaningful reliability data as a vehicle for future standardization of reliability test methodology for MEMS packaging.