Device and Reliability Physics of Capacitive MEMS

Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and its younger “brother” nano-electro-mechanical systems (NEMS) are fast growing fields. In fact, in many areas, it is now at a turning point from the initial phase of device concept research and prototyping to volume manufacturing. To large extent, this transition is due to better general understanding of MEMS devices, materials and processes, major advances in packaging methods, and, as a result, significantly improved reliability characteristics up to billions of operation cycles.