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The development of micro‐electro‐mechanical systems (MEMS) for use in military and consumer electronics necessitates an analysis of MEMS component reliability. The understanding of the reliability characteristics of SCSi within MEMS structures should be improved to advance MEMS applications. Reliability assessments of MEMS technology may be used to conduct virtual qualification of these devices more efficiently. The purpose of this paper is to create a simple, inexpensive test methodology to use the dynamic fracture strength of a MEMS device to predict its reliability, and to verify this method through experimentation.

The dynamic fracture strength of single crystal silicon (SCSi) was used to model MEMS devices subjected to high shock loading. Experimentation with SCSi MEMS structures was performed following the proposed test methodology. A probabilistic distribution for bending of Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE) processed SCSi around the <110> directions was generated as a tool for assessing product reliability.

Post shock test inspections revealed that failures occurred along {111} planes. Additional experiments provided preliminary estimates of the fracture strength for bending of DRIE processed SCSi around the <100> directions in excess of 1.1 GPa.

This paper proposes a test methodology for an efficient method to assess the reliability of processed SCSi based on dynamic fracture strength.