Very high-cycle fatigue failure in micron-scale polycrystalline silicon films: Effects of environment and surface oxide thickness

Fatigue failure in micron-scale polycrystalline silicon structural films, a phenomenon that is not observed in bulk silicon, can severely impact the durability and reliability of microelectromechanical system devices. Despite several studies on the very high-cycle fatigue behavior of these films (up to 1012 cycles), there is still an on-going debate on the precise mechanisms involved. We show here that for devices fabricated in the multiuser microelectromechanical system process (MUMPs) foundry and Sandia Ultra-planar, Multi-level MEMS Technology (SUMMiT V) process and tested under equi-tension/compression loading at ∼40 kHz in different environments, stress-lifetime data exhibit similar trends in fatigue behavior in ambient room air, shorter lifetimes in higher relative humidity environments, and no fatigue failure at all in high vacuum. The transmission electron microscopy of the surface oxides in the test samples shows a four- to sixfold thickening of the surface oxide at stress concentrations after fatigue failure, but no thickening after overload fracture in air or after fatigue cycling in vacuo. We find that such oxide thickening and premature fatigue failure (in air) occur in devices with initial oxide thicknesses of ∼4 nm (SUMMiT V) as well as in devices with much thicker initial oxides ∼20 nm (MUMPs). Such results are interpreted and explained by a reaction-layer fatigue mechanism. Specifically, moisture-assisted subcritical cracking within a cyclic stress-assisted thickened oxide layer occurs until the crack reaches a critical size to cause catastrophic failure of the entire device. The entirety of the evidence presented here strongly indicates that the reaction-layer fatigue mechanism is the governing mechanism for fatigue failure in micron-scale polycrystalline silicon thin films. © 2007 American Institute of Physics.