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Interfacial Effects on the Premature Failure of Polycrystalline Silicon Structural Films

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2011

C.L. Muhlstein ,
E.A. Stach  and
R.O. Ritchie
C.L. Muhlstein
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802
E.A. Stach
Affiliation:
National Center for Electron Microscopy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720
R.O. Ritchie
Affiliation:
Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Department of Materials, Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
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Abstract

Although bulk silicon is not known to be susceptible to cyclic fatigue, micron-scale structures made from mono and polycrystalline silicon films are vulnerable to degradation by fatigue in ambient air environments. Such silicon thin films are used in small-scale structural applications, including microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), and display “metal-like” stress-life (S/N) fatigue behavior in room temperature air environments. Previously, the authors have observed fatigue lives in excess of 1011 cycles at high frequency (∼40 kHz), fully-reversed stress amplitudes as low as half the fracture strength using a surface micromachined, resonant-loaded, fatigue characterization structures. Stress-life fatigue, transmission electron microscopy, infrared microscopy, and numerical models were used to establish that the mechanism of the fatigue failure of thin-film silicon involves the sequential oxidation and environmentally-assisted crack growth solely within the native silica layer, a process that we term “reaction-layer fatigue”. Only thin films are susceptible to such a failure mechanism because the critical crack size for catastrophic failure of the entire silicon structure can be exceeded by a crack solely within the native oxide layer. The importance of the interfacial geometry on the mechanics of the reaction-layer fatigue mechanism is described.

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 741: Symposium J – Nano- and Microelectromechanical Systems (NEMS and MEMS) and Molecular Machines , 2002 , J3.5
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2003

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