Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) can be defined as miniaturised mechanical and electromechanical elements (i.e., devices and structures) that are made using the techniques of microfabrication. MEMS are commonly used as actuators, sensors, and radio frequency and microfluidic components all of these with a wide range of applications across a variety of fields including health care, automotive, and military industries.
These MEMS devices can match or even exceed the performance of their conventional counterparts, however, with smaller volume, lower weight, and significant lower production costs. There are however, considerable challenges in the fabricating and packaging such devices. In particular, diverse issues related to yield and reliability need to be overcome.
Fig 1. MEMS with multiple cross-sections through the bonding layer of W2W cavity die.
Inertial structures for motion sensors are generally composed by Wafer-to-Wafer (W2W) cavity die. The lid is bonded to the sensor with a metallic material (Fig. 1). Routine failure analysis consists in examining manufacturing defects in the bonding layer that lead to malfunction. For this purpose, large-area cross-sections at specific locations on the MEMS device need to be prepared. These cross-sections are conventionally prepared by mechanical polishing, a technique which indeed enables large-area cross-sectioning, but on the other hand, induces severe artefacts such delamination, tearing, mechanical stress or even the total destruction of a part of the die. Besides, it is difficult to keep a good control on end pointing.
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