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The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the major reliability issues of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) under mechanical and environmental loading conditions. Furthermore, a comprehensive study on the nonlinear behavior of silicon MEMS devices is presented and different aspects of this phenomenon are discussed.

Regarding the reliability investigations, the most important failure aspects affecting the proper operation of the MEMS components with focus on those caused by environmental and mechanical loads are reviewed. These studies include failures due to fatigue loads, mechanical vibration, mechanical shock, humidity, temperature and particulate contamination. In addition, the influence of squeeze film air damping on the dynamic response of MEMS devices is briefly discussed. A further subject of this paper is discussion of studies on the nonlinearity of silicon MEMS. For this purpose, after a description of the basic principles of nonlinearity, the consequences of nonlinear phenomena such as frequency shift, hysteresis and harmonic generation and their effects on the device performance are reviewed. Special attention is paid to the mode coupling effect between the resonant modes as a result of energy transfer because of the nonlinearity of silicon. For a better understanding of these effects, the nonlinear behavior of silicon is demonstrated by using the example of Si cantilever beams.

It is shown that environmental and mechanical loads can influence on proper operation of the MEMS components and lead to early fracture. In addition, it is demonstrated that nonlinearity modifies dynamic response and leads to new phenomena such as frequency shift and mode coupling. Finally, some ideas are given as possible future areas of research works.

This is a review paper and aimed to review the latest manuscripts published in the field of reliability and nonlinearity of the MEMS structures.

The variational principle views a complex problem in an energy way, it gives good physical understanding of an iteration method, and the variational-based numerical methods always have a conservation scheme with a fast convergent rate. The purpose of this paper is to establish a variational principle for a fractal nano/microelectromechanical (N/MEMS) system.

This paper begins with an approximate variational principle in literature for the studied problem, and a genuine variational principle is obtained by the semi-inverse method.

The semi-inverse method is a good mathematical tool to the search for a genuine fractal variational formulation for the N/MEMS system.

The established variational principle can be used for both analytical and numerical analyses of the N/MEMS systems, and it can be extended to some more complex cases.

The variational principle can be used for variational-based finite element methods and energy-based analytical methods.

The new and genuine variational principle is obtained. This paper discovers the missing piece of the puzzle for the establishment of a variational principle from governing equations for a complex problem by the semi-inverse method. The new variational theory opens a new direction in fractal MEMS systems.

Telemetry capsules have existed since the 1950s and were used to measure temperature, pH or pressure inside the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. It was hoped that these capsules would replace invasive techniques in the diagnosis of function disorders in the GI tract. However, problems such as signal loss and uncertainty of the pills position limited their use in a clinical setting. In this paper, a review of the capabilities of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) for the fabrication of a wireless pressure sensor microsystem is presented.

The circuit requirements and methods of data transfer are examined. The available fabrication methods for MEMS sensors are also discussed and examples of wireless sensors are given. Finally, the drawbacks of using this technology are examined.

MEMS for use in wireless monitoring of pressure in the GI tract have been investigated. It has been shown that capacitive pressure sensors are particularly suitable for this purpose. Sensors fabricated for wireless continuous monitoring of pressure have been reviewed. Great progress, especially using surface micromachining, has been made in recent years. However, despite these advances, some challenges remain.

Provides a review of the capabilities of MEMS.

Technological capabilities of manufacturing microelectromechanical system (MEMS) gyroscopes are still insufficient if compared to manufacturing high-efficient gyroscopes and accelerometers. This creates weaknesses in their mechanical structure and restrictions in the measurement accuracy, stability and reliability of MEMS gyroscopes and accelerometers. This paper aims to develop a new architectural solutions for optimization of MEMS gyroscopes and accelerometers and propose a multi-axis MEMS inertial module combining the functions of gyroscope and accelerometer.

The finite element modeling (FEM) and the modal analysis in FEM are used for sensing, drive and control electrode capacitances of the multi-axis MEMS inertial module with the proposed new architecture. The description is given to its step-by-step process of manufacturing. Algorithms are developed to detect its angular rates and linear acceleration along three Cartesian axes.

Experimental results are obtained for eigenfrequencies and capacitances of sensing, drive and control electrodes for 50 manufactured prototypes of the silicon electromechanical sensor (SES). For 42 SES prototypes, a good match is observed between the calculated and simulated capacitance values of comb electrodes. Thus, the mean-square deviation is not over 20 per cent. The maximum difference between the calculated and simulated eigenfrequencies in the drive channel of 11 SES prototypes is not over 3 per cent. The same difference is detected for eigenfrequencies in the first sensing channel of 17 SES prototypes.

This study shows a way to design and optimize the structure and theoretical background for the development of the MEMS inertial module combining the functions of gyroscope and accelerometer. The obtained results will improve and expand the manufacturing technology of MEMS gyroscopes and accelerometers.

A frequency tunable half‐wave resonator at 3 GHz is presented with a microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) variable capacitor as the tuning element. The capacitor is fabricated using the multi‐user MEMS process (MUMPs) technology provided by JDS/Cronos, and transferred to an alumina substrate by an in‐house developed flip‐chip process. This capacitor is electrostatically actuated. The resulting C‐V response is linear with a slope of 0.05 pF/V for a wide range of actuation voltages. The MEMS device has a capacitance ratio of 3:1 for 0‐70 V bias, with a Q‐factor of 140 measured at 1 GHz. A half‐wave tunable microstrip resonator with bias lines is designed to include this MEMS device, which exhibits linear tuning over 180 MHz (6 percent) centered around 3 GHz with a constant 3 dB bandwidth of 160 MHz over the entire tuning range. The power consumption of the MEMS device was measured to be negligible.

This paper aims to propose a novel design of an ohmic contact single-pole double-throw (SPDT) microelectromechanical system (MEMS) microswitch for radio frequency applications.

The proposed microswitch (SPDT design) shares antenna between transmitter and receiver in a wireless sensor. An electrical voltage is used to create an electrostatic force that controls the ON/OFF states of the microswitch. First, the authors develop a mathematical model of the proposed microswitch and propose a reduced-order model of the design, based on the differential quadrature method, which fully incorporates the electrostatic force nonlinearities. The authors solve the static, transient and dynamic behavior and compare the results with finite element solutions. Then, the authors examine the dynamic solution of the switch under different actuation waveforms.

The obtained results showed a significant reduction in actuation voltage, pull-in bandwidth and switching time.

In this paper, a new design of SPDT MEMS switch is proposed, the SPDT switch needs low voltage to be actuated and it can be easily integrated with integrated circuits.

This study aims to investigate the options for additive rapid prototyping methods in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology. Additive rapid prototyping technologies, such as stereolithography (SLA), fused deposition modeling (FDM) and selective laser sintering (SLS), all commonly known as three-dimensional (3D) printing methods, are reviewed and compared with the resolution requirements of the traditional MEMS fabrication methods.

In the 3D print approach, the entire assembly, parts and prototypes are built using various plastic and metal materials directly from the software file input, completely bypassing any additional processing steps. The review highlights their potential place in the overall process flow to reduce the complexity of traditional microfabrication and long processing cycles needed to test multiple prototypes before the final design is set.

Additive manufacturing (AM) is a promising manufacturing technique in micro-device technology.

In the current state of 3D printing, microfluidic and lab-on-a-chip devices for fluid handling and manipulation appear to be the most compatible with the 3D print methods, given their fairly coarse minimum feature size of 50-500 μm. Future directions in the 3D materials and method development are identified, such as adhesion and material compatibility studies of the 3D print materials, wafer-level printing and conductive materials development. One of the most important goals should be the drive toward finer resolution and layer thickness (1-10 μm) to stimulate the use of the 3D printing in a wider array of MEMS devices.

The review combines two discrete disciplines, microfabrication and AM, and shows how microfabrication and micro-device commercialization may benefit from employing methods developed by the AM community.

This paper aims to describe the fabrication and characterization of current mirror-integrated microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based pressure sensor.

The integrated pressure-sensing structure consists of three identical 100-µm long and 500-µm wide n-channel MOSFETs connected in a resistive loaded current mirror configuration. The input transistor of the mirror acts as a constant current source MOSFET and the output transistors are the stress sensing MOSFETs embedded near the fixed edge and at the center of a square silicon diaphragm to sense tensile and compressive stresses, respectively, developed under applied pressure. The current mirror circuit was fabricated using standard polysilicon gate complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology on the front side of the silicon wafer and the flexible pressure sensing square silicon diaphragm, with a length of 1,050 µm and width of 88 µm, was formed by bulk micromachining process using tetramethylammonium hydroxide solution on the backside of the wafer. The pressure is monitored by the acquisition of drain voltages of the pressure sensing MOSFETs placed near the fixed edge and at the center of the diaphragm.

The current mirror-integrated pressure sensor was successfully fabricated and tested using in-house developed pressure measurement system. The pressure sensitivity of the tested sensor was found to be approximately 0.3 mV/psi (or 44.6 mV/MPa) for pressure range of 0 to 100 psi. In addition, the pressure sensor was also simulated using Intellisuite MEMS Software and simulated pressure sensitivity of the sensor was found to be approximately 53.6 mV/MPa. The simulated and measured pressure sensitivities of the pressure sensor are in close agreement.

The work reported in this paper validates the use of MOSFETs connected in current mirror configuration for the measurement of tensile and compressive stresses developed in a silicon diaphragm under applied pressure. This current mirror readout circuitry integrated with MEMS pressure-sensing structure is new and fully compatible to standard CMOS processes and has a promising application in the development CMOS-MEMS-integrated smart sensors.