Experimental Technique for Fatigue Testing of MEMS in Liquids

An experimental technique for the fatigue testing of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) in liquid environments is described in this paper. A bulk-micromachined MEMS tensile specimen with integral grips was fabricated, and tensile-tensile fatigue tests were performed in air and in a saline solution. The fatigue life of the 200-nm thick aluminum specimen was observed to range from 1.2 x 10(6) to 2.2 x 10(6) cycles when tested at equal values of the mean and alternating stresses of 0.13 GPa. [2011-0236]