| Autor: |
Norman F. Smith, Michael T. Dugger, Samuel L. Miller, Jeremy A. Walraven, Lloyd W. Irwin, William M. Miller, William P. Eaton, Danelle M. Tanner |
| Rok vydání: |
2003 |
| Předmět: |
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| Zdroj: |
1999 IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium Proceedings. 37th Annual (Cat. No.99CH36296). |
| DOI: |
10.1109/relphy.1999.761611 |
| Popis: |
Humidity is shown to be a strong factor in the wear of rubbing surfaces in polysilicon micromachines. We demonstrate that very low humidity can lead to very high wear without a significant change in reliability. We show that the volume of wear debris generated is a function of the humidity in an air environment. As the humidity decreases, the wear debris generated increases. For the higher humidity levels, the formation of surface hydroxides may act as a lubricant. The dominant failure mechanism has been identified as wear. The wear debris has been identified as amorphous oxidized silicon. Large slivers (approximately 1 /spl mu/m in length) of debris observed at the low humidity level were also amorphous oxidized silicon. Using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), we observed that the wear debris forms spherical and rod-like shapes. We compared two surface treatment processes: a fluorinated silane chain (FTS) process and supercritical CO/sub 2/ dried (SCCO/sub 2/) process. The microengines using the SCCO/sub 2/ process were found to be less reliable than those released with the FTS process under two humidity levels. |
| Databáze: |
OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
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