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Material Issues for Microsystems

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Abstract

For manufacturing a stable, reliable and durable microsystem, the designers must have the correct mechanical properties of materials which are used to prepare structural components before designing the Microsystems. It is well known that the mechanical properties of materials are not only depending on the materials composition, but also on its microstructure, manufacturing processes, and micro components size. Because the material’s properties that could be found in handbook are for bulk materials which are prepared by standard producing processes (for example: rolling, forging). But the micro components in Microsystems are manufactured by the way quite different from the macro components with bulk materials (for example: CVD, Sputtering, Etching). Therefore, the microsystem designer can not use the materials properties listed in handbook to design micro components.

Due to above reasons, there is a serious challenge of materials issue to MEMS designer. It is hardly to make sure that what correct materials properties should he picked up. To find the data from handbook is incorrect, but he could not also find the suitable data from literatures based on the dimensions and preparation processes of micro component he designed. In such case, the designer should measure the materials properties for important microparts by himself before designing MEMS system.

Hereby, before the material’s properties which are usually selected in Microsystems are introduced, this chapter will briefly descript the failure analysis of micro parts and the measuring methods of material’s mechanical properties from the micro components.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Institute of Micro/Nano Science and Technology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, No. 1954, Huashan Road, Shanghai, 200030, China

    Bingchu Cai

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  1. Bingchu Cai
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Precision Instruments & Mechanology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Zhaoying Zhou

  2. Center for Nanostructure Characterization and Fabrication (CNCF), Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332-0245, USA

    Liwei Lin

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720-1740, USA

    Zhonglin Wang

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© 2012 Tsinghua University Press, Beijing and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Cai, B. (2012). Material Issues for Microsystems. In: Zhou, Z., Wang, Z., Lin, L. (eds) Microsystems and Nanotechnology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-18293-8_3

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