Paper Info
Title
Assessment of dielectric charging in electrostatically driven MEMS devices: A comparison of available characterization techniques
Abstract
The present work investigates the results of different characterization methods for the dielectric charging phenomenon applicable to metal–insulator–metal (MIM) capacitors and electrostatically actuated micro-electro-mechanical-systems (MEMS). The discharge current transients (DCT), thermally stimulated depolarization current (TSDC) and Kelvin probe force microscopy (KPFM) assessment methods have been applied to either MIM capacitors or electrostatic capacitive MEMS switches or both. For the first time, the KPFM methodology has been used to create a link between the results obtained from the DCT and TSDC techniques applicable for MIM and the results from MEMS switches. The comparison shows that the application of KPFM method to MIM and MEMS leads to the same results on the electrical properties of the dielectric material. This provides a novel powerful tool for the assessment of dielectric charging for MEMS switches using MIM capacitors which have much simpler layer structure. On the other hand the TSDC method reveals a continuous distribution of relaxation time constants, which supports the dependence of relaxation time constant calculated for MEMS on the duration of the observation time window.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1016/j.microrel.2010.07.027
Microelectronics Reliability
Keywords
DocType
Volume
relaxation time
Journal
50
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
9
0026-2714
6
PageRank 
References 
Authors
1.14
3
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Usama Zaghloul1286.35
M. Koutsoureli2217.67
Haiying Wang31264171.33
F. Coccetti44011.42
G. Papaioannou5358.62
P. Pons64918.02
Robert Plana75814.60