1522

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 47, NO. 7, JULY 2000

Fracture Strength and Fatigue of Polysilicon

Determined by a Novel Thermal Actuator
Hergen Kapels, Robert Aigner, and Josef Binder

AbstractA novel thermal actuator for the determination of

polysilicon fracture strength and investigation of its fatigue is presented. The actuator consists of two narrow beams, which expand
due to electrical heating, and a cold plate to which a short fracture beam is attached. Because of its small dimensions, the actuator
can be used for on-wafer testing. This method is suitable for tensile
and compressive material. Using different types of fracture beams
fracture strengths were compared for uniaxial tension and bending
test. Using Weibull statistics, the fracture strength for polysilicon
0.5) GPa in tensile tests and (3.4
has been found to be (2.9
0.5) GPa in bending tests. In fatigue investigations, we observe that
fracture strength decreases slowly with time to 2.2 GPa after 106
cycles.

Fig. 1. Length expansion of a fracture beam.

Index TermsFatigue, fracture strength, polysilicon, thermal

actuator.

A. Strength and Force

beams allows the comparison of uniaxial tension and bending

results.
II. THEORY
Stretching a micromechanical beam by a length expansion
, as shown in Fig. 1, leads to a tensile stress in the material
according to

I. INTRODUCTION

RACTURE strength and long-term stability are crucial

quantities that directly affect the reliability of MEMS.
Polysilicon layers are widely used for building MEMS devices,
but so far there has been no possibility to investigate both parameters simultaneously using one single microstructure with a
small fracture beam tested by purely electrical measurements.
In certain cases, such as materials with tensile prestress, the
fracture strength can be extracted from long microstructures
[1]. Other methods use macroscopic setups with large structures
with a size of several millimeters [2][5]. But the mechanical
properties of micromachined elements depend not only on
the material used but also on the size and the shape of the
microelement. The way how loads are applied is also critical
[6]. To achieve good accuracy in characterizing the mechanical
properties of a microelement in a MEMS application, it is
necessary to have test elements manufactured with a process
that is identical to that used for the applications, and to have
test elements of small size. Process control during production
requires small test structures, which can be placed on chip
close to the sensor and actuator elements of a MEMS product
and which have purely electrical readout.
This article presents the results for fracture strength and fatigue of polysilicon determined by using a novel thermal actuator which is suitable for tensile and compressive polysilicon,
on-chip integration and process control. Using different fracture
Manuscript received November 12, 1999. The review of this paper was arranged by Editor W. Weber.
H. Kapels and R. Aigner are with the Infineon Technologies, GS MST,
D-81730 Munich, Germany (e-mail: hergen.kapels@infineon.com).
J. Binder is with the University of Bremen, IMSAS, D-28359 Bremen, Germany.
Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9383(00)05210-2.

(1)
the Youngs modulus of
where is the initial length and
the beam material. The mechanical tensile force required for
stretching is consequently
(2)
From (2) it can be concluded that fracturing a polysilicon
m, width
m, thickness
beam with a length of
m,
GPa and an assumed fracture strength of
mN and a
implies a minimum tensile force of
nm. These forces
length expansion of at least
and deflections have to be generated by a suitable micromechanical actuator.
For fracture tests under uniaxial loading, we used fracture
beams with rectangular and cylindrical side wall geometry.
The rectangular beams showed a steady stress distribution in
the middle section, but stress concentrations in the corners of
the fracture beam anchors. Using tailored fracture beams this
concentrations were avoided, but the stress distribution in the
middle section is inhomogeneous. By the use of finite element
simulations with ANSYS, the two designs were compared the
deflection dependent maximum stress values were determined.
The results for 20 nm deflection of the two beams are shown in
Figs. 2 and 3.
B. Analytical Model for the Fracture Actuator
To develop an actuator for fracture tests, we first compare
different actuator principles to determine a suitable method for
generating a force of 10 mN and a deflection of 60 nm.

00189383/00$10.00 2000 IEEE

KAPELS et al.: FRACTURE STRENTGH AND FATIGUE OF POLYSILICON

1523

Fig. 4.

Fig. 2. Stress distribution of a rectangular and a tailored fracture beam for

tensile tests determined by finite element analysis.

Cross-sectional diagram of the actuator for thermal analysis.

where is the operating temperature and

the substrate temperature. As shown in Fig. 4, the heat flow equation is derived
by examining a differential element of the microbeam. Under
steady-state conditions, resistive heating power generated in the
element is equal to heat conduction along the element. The temperature distribution of the beam can be described by the following second-order differential equation [7]
(5)

Fig. 3. Stress distribution of a rectangular and a tailored fracture beam for

tensile tests determined by finite element analysis.

1) Parallel Plates: The electrostatic force between two electrodes of a parallel plate capacitor is given by
(3)
m
Assuming a lateral actuator with an area of
600 m and a voltage of
50 V between the electrodes,
the generated electrostatic force is in inverse proportion to the
square of distance. The minimum distance of the electrodes
is limited by lithography to
m. With this minimum
mN is too small. For
distance the generated force of
10 mN force a minimum gap of 200 nm between the electrodes
is necessary, but this is technologically not feasible.
2) Comb Structures: Comb structures are well suited to
achieve high amplitudes at resonance. But to determine the
fracture strength, the necessary forces and deflections have
to be generated in static operation, and in static operation the
generated electrostatic force is very small [9]. For instance, 100
comb fingers with a distance of 0.8 m and a voltage of 50 V
N.
generate a static force of
3) Thermal Expansion: A current-flow through a beam
causes Joule heating and, as consequence, thermoelastic expansion. In Fig. 4, a part of the cross-section of a thermal beam (e.g.,
polysilicon) is shown.
The electrothermal response of the polysilicon microbeam is
generally simplified for analysis in one dimension [14], [15]
since the length of the beam is much larger than its cross-section.
The resistivity of polysilicon, , is usually related to temperature. The resistivity is assumed here to have a linear temperature
, that is [7],
coefficient, , such that
(4)

is the thermal conductivity of polysilicon, the curwhere

rent density, the current and the thickness of the thermal
beam. is the shape factor which accounts for the impact of
the shape of the element on heat conduction to the substrate and
is the thermal resistance between the polysilicon beam and
the substrate if the microbeam is wide enough [15], [7]. Physically, the first term on the left side represents the net rate of heat
conduction into the element per unit volume. The second term
is the rate of heat energy generation inside the element per unit
volume, and the third represents the rate of heat energy loss in
the element per unit volume. Solving the equation leads to the
following temperature distribution for the hot polysilicon beam
[7]

(6)
and
are depending on the boundary
The constants
conditions. The thermal expansion of the hot arms can be calculated as
(7)
where is the thermal expansion coefficient of polysilicon. If
the beam is clamped on both sides, the maximum force is limited
[10].
by the so-called Euler strength
(8)
If the Euler strength is exceeded, the straight beam starts
m, width
buckling. For a beam with length
m, thickness
and an maximum temperature inK with
mA, the thermal expancrease of
nm, and the maximum force
sion is
mN. In contrast to electrostatic actuators a thermoelastic actuator can generate the required forces and deflections. Since the
heated beams tend to buckle if the applied stress exceeds a critical limit, the design must be carefully optimized (8).

1524

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 47, NO. 7, JULY 2000

Fig. 7. Cross section of the thermal actuator.

Fig. 5.

Top view of actuator concept for fracture tests.

Fig. 8. SEM-picture of the fabricated device.

Fig. 6. Temperature distribution along the polysilicon beams

cold plate c for an electric driving current of 35 mA.

h ;h

and the

4) Concept for a Thermal Actuator: To increase the force by

the factor of two and to prevent heating of the fracture beam we
use a U-shaped electrothermal structure with long heated beams
and a short fracture beam
. A draft of the actuator
is shown in Fig. 5.
While the heated beams warm up, the temperature in the fracture beam has to remain constant. This is achieved by using
long and narrow heated beams and a short and wide plate
to which the fracture beam is attached. The thermal beams are
and
heated up by driving electric current through pads
. The short fracture beam
is connected to pad
.
Solving the second-order differential equation and applying the
and
and the
solution to the two hot thermal beams
, the temperature distribution can be derived
cold plate

(9)
The anchor pads are assumed to have the same temperature as
. Utilizing the boundary conditions the conthe substrate
to
can be calculated. This gives the following temstants
along
perature distribution across the actuator from anchor
to the cold plate
and back along
the thermal beam
to the second anchor
as shown in Fig. 6.
From Fig. 6, it is obvious that while the maximum temperature in the thermal beams at 35 mA is close to 330 C, the temperature of the plate to which the fracture beam is connected is

lower than 90 C. Using (1), (7) and (9) the expansion and corresponding strength in the fracture beam can be calculated. To
determine the temperature distribution and the expansion of the
fabricated devices more precisely, we used finite element simulations with ANSYS.
III. FABRICATION OF THE DEVICE
The thermal actuator is made of 4 m low stress polysilicon
(510 MPa) with a surface micromachining process. The oxide
(600 nm) underneath the polysilicon serves as sacrificial layer
and is removed by HF gas etching [8]. For mechanical stabilization and as a thermal shunt the polysilicon pads are anchored
onto a bottom polysilicon layer which is isolated by a thin oxide
layer from the substrate (Fig. 7).
, which is placed on the oppoWith an additional pad
site side of the plate, it is possible to measure the resistance of
between
and
. This is an easy
the fracture beam
way to determine the event of fracture with high accuracy. Using
these purely electrical measurements, it is also possible to investigate the long-term stability. For this purpose, a constant current, which is slightly lower than required for fracture, is applied
and the time until the fracture beam breaks is measured. From
the moments of fracture for different currents and equal structures the long-term stability of the fracture beam material can be
determined. A SEM-picture of the fabricated device is shown in
Fig. 8.
IV. RESULTS
Several thermal actuators with different geometrical dimensions were built and characterized. The length of the thermal
beams is 200 m or 300 m, the width is 10 m, 20 m and 50
m, respectively. To investigate fracture in tension and bending
case we use 5 m long and 0.7 m wide fracture beams for uniaxial loading and 4 m long and 2.5 m wide beams rotated by
90 for bending tests.

KAPELS et al.: FRACTURE STRENTGH AND FATIGUE OF POLYSILICON

1525

Fig. 9. Relative fracture beam resistance for different thermal beam currents
and geometry.
Fig. 11. Electrothermal actuator with indicator for optically determination of
displacement.

Fig. 10.

Fracture surface of a polysilicon beam.

A. Fracture Beam Resistance

Fig. 9 illustrates the behavior of polysilicon beams prior to
fracture for different dimensions of the electrothermal actuator.
When the electric current through the beam is increased, the
fracture beam expands. The electrical resistance of the fracture beam increases in a nonlinear way due to the temperature increase in the plate and the fracture beam. The longer the
heating beams are, the lower is the temperature increase in the
plate and in the fracture beam. If the maximum current corresponding to the maximum tensile strength is reached, the fracture beam breaks and the resistance rises to infinity. The current
for fracture depends on the geometry of the heated beams. Wider
thermal beams require higher current for fracture but generate
higher maximum forces. The measurement of fracture current
has a high reproducibility with a variance of less than 1 mA.
A SEM-photo of the polysilicon fracture beam surface after
tensile testing is shown in Fig. 10.
B. Determination of Displacement
For the fracture strength determination of polysilicon, the displacements of the fracture beam have to be measured. Therefore,
the actuators were equipped with a deflection indicator for optical readout.
The mechanical gain of the indicator in Fig. 11 is 1:20. Using
a nonius with a resolution of 0.1 m allows measuring the displacement of the electrothermal actuator with a resolution of
5 nm. Thereby it is also possible to determine and consider a
zero deflection of the actuator because of a prestress level in the
polysilicon.
C. Determination of Fracture Strength of Polysilicon (Tensile
Test)
The displacement of a thermal actuator with 200 m long and
10 m wide heated beams and a fracture beam with uniaxial

Fig. 12. Displacement of an electrothermal actuator before and after fracture

( ) compared to the displacement without fracture beam ( ).

loading is presented in Fig. 12. Increasing the current through

the thermal beams leads to an increase in temperature and therefore to an increase in deflection. The maximum deflection of
the actuator is reduced because of the additional spring constant of the fracture beam. If the fracture strength is reached,
the beam breaks and the deflection increases rapidly to the maximum value determined by the temperature distribution on the
actuator. Reducing the current after fracture leads to a cooling
of the actuator and therefore to a decrease in deflection.
Fig. 13 shows a top view of the beam after fracture using 42
mA current.
Because the indicator is connected to the top of the wide and
long plate of the actuator and not directly to the fracture beam,
the raw measurements must be corrected for the low, but perceptible thermoelastic expansion of the plate. This expansion can
be determined by an additional measurement of the temperature
dependence of the electric resistance of the plate. By measuring
and
(shown in Fig. 8)
the electric potential at the pads
during the fracture measurements, the temperature dependent
electric resistance of the plate can be investigated without influencing the fracture measurements electrically. The connections between the pads and the plate are long and narrow beams
with a very low mechanical stiffness that, compared with the
high mechanical stiffness of the fracture beam, did not affect

1526

Fig. 13.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 47, NO. 7, JULY 2000

Rupture of a polysilicon beam in tensile test.

the deflection of the plate. With a temperature controlled chuck

and additional clamped-clamped beams fabricated on the same
wafers, the specific resistance of the 4- m thick polysilicon
m, and the temperature dependence
was measured to 6.04
K with an accuracy of 1%. Thereby
to
the temperature increase in the plate can be determined with an
accuracy of 1%. The maximum increase in plate temperature is,
depending on the actuator design, between 30 C and 80 C.
Additionally the fracture beam is connected to anchor which
temperature is substrate temperature.
Fracture in brittle material is often governed by the presence
of defects, the largest of which initiates failure [12]. Therefore,
the fracture strength of polysilicon does not follow a Gaussian
distribution and must be evaluated with Weibull statistics [6],
[11]. The fracture probability , as a function of the stress
applied to the test structure, is described by the Weibull probability distribution as [16]

Fig. 14.

Weibull distribution of fracture strength in tensile tests.

Fig. 15.

Stress distribution in a clamped-clamped beam for bending tests.

(10)
is the Weibull modulus. is the surface area of the
where
is a normalizing factor. Equation (10) is
test structure and
valid when the defects causing the fracture originate from the
surface of the structure. The expected mean fracture strength of
the test structure , under axial tensile stress can be calculated
from [16]

From the experimental data shown in Fig. 15, a Weibull

is determined. Therefore, the mean
module of
fracture strength in tensile test is calculated to
GPa. These results agree with the measured strengths of 2.02.8
GPa for doped and undoped polysilicon films reported by [1]
or [18].

(11)
is the standard gamma function. It is common to
where
reduce this expression to one linear in the Weibull modulus
by taking the natural logarithm of
twice, to yield
(12)
Fig. 14 shows the logarithm of measured fracture strengths in
tensile test versus their double logarithm probability, a straight
line with slope .
The standard deviation of the distribution depends only upon
if it is normalized with respect to the mean [12]

(13)

D. Determination of Fracture Strength of Polysilicon (Bending

Test)
In bending tests the strength distribution in the fracture beam
is quite different to tensile loading. In tensile tests the stress is
constant over the cross section. In contrast deflecting a beam in
bending tests, shown in Fig. 15, leads to a stress concentration
at only one point, at the outer edge of the root of the beam.
Therefore the rupture of the polysilicon beams, shown in
Fig. 16, starts in the corners.
The failure of brittle material is often dominated by the presence of bulk or surface defects at which fracture initiates when
the local stress is sufficiently high. Assuming that the flaw distribution is random, the presence of a large region of highly
stressed material increases the likelihood that the structure will
fail at a lower stress than an identically sized beam loaded in
bending to the same maximum stress [17]. To determine the
maximum stress in bending tests finite element analysis with

KAPELS et al.: FRACTURE STRENTGH AND FATIGUE OF POLYSILICON

Fig. 16.
tests.

1527

Rupture of a deflected clamped-clamped polysilicon beam in bending

Fig. 19. Whler chart for polysilicon determined in long-term investigations

with thermal actuators.

structure versus the number of cycles until fracture, a Whler

chart [13], shown in Fig. 19, is generated.
We measured for the first time a slightly decrease in fracture
strength by time. From the mean tensile fracture strength of
GPa in static measurements because of mechanical aging
the fracture limit is reduced to 2.2 GPa for 10 cycles.
V. CONCLUSION
Fig. 17.

Weibull distribution of fracture strength in bending tests.

Fig. 18. Deflection and applied stress of the fracture beam in long-term
investigations corresponding to a sinusoidal current.

ANSYS were performed. Using Weibull statistics the fracture probability for different maximum stress values, shown in
Fig. 17, were calculated.
The mean fracture strength in bending tests was determined
GPa. These stress data are consistent with
to
the maximum bending stress values of 2.95.5 GPa reported in
[19].
E. Long-Term Stability of Polysilicon
With the actuator, shown in Fig. 8, not only the static fracture
strength but also the long-term stability of polysilicon can be
investigated by using only electrical measurements. Therefore, a
sinusoidal current corresponding to a sinusoidal stress, shown in
Fig. 18, which is slightly lower than required for static fracture is
applied, and the time until the fracture beam breaks is measured.
A lot of identically manufactured structures were deflected
with in each case different maximum stress levels. The number
of cycles corresponding to the time until the beam breaks were
measured. From the maximum stress levels applied to each test

A thermal actuator has been realized which, for the first

time, enables on-wafer the determination of fracture strength
and long-term stability by purely electrical measurements
during process control with high reproducibility. The actuator
can generate very high forces up to 20 mN at deflections of
250 nm. It is driven purely by electrical current which enables
static and dynamic testing of the material. The deflection can
be measured optically with an indicator. With this actuator the
0.5)
fracture strength of polysilicon was found to be (2.9
0.5) GPa in bending tests.
GPa in tensile testing and (3.4
In long-term investigations we observe a slightly decrease in
fracture strength to 2.2 GPa over 10 cycles. Its cause is to be
found in the mechanical aging of the material.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Mr. J. Urscher, D. Stuart, and
R. Sattler for providing characterizations of the actuators and for
finite element analysis.
REFERENCES
[1] M. Biebl and H. von Philipsborn, Fracture strength of doped and
undoped polysilicon, in Tech. Dig. 8th Int. Conf. on Solid-State Sensors and Actuator (Transducers 95 and Eurosensors IX), Stockholm,
Sweden, June 2528 1995, pp. 7275.
[2] W. N. Sharpe, B. Yuan, R. L. Edwards, and R. Vaidyanathan, Measurements of Youngs modulus, Poissons ratio, and tensile strength of
polysilicon, in Proc.10th IEEE Int. Workshop on Microelectromechanical Systems, Nagoya, Japan, 1997, pp. 424429.
[3] I. Chasiotis and W. Knauss, Mechanical properties of thin polysilicon
films by means of probe microscopy, Proc. SPIE, vol. 3512, pp. 6675,
1998.
[4] W. N. Sharpe, K. Turner, and R. L. Edwards, Polysilicon tensile testing
with electrostatic gripping, in Proc. Symp. MEMS Structures for Materials Research, vol. 15-16.04.98, San Francisco, CA, pp. 191196.
[5] T. Tsuchiya, O. Tabata, J. Sakata, and Y. Taga, Tensile testing of polycrystalline silicon thin films using electrostatic force grip, Trans. Inst.
Elect. Eng. Jpn., vol. 116-E, pp. 441446, 1996.

1528

[6] S. Greek, F. Ericson, S. Johansson, and J. A. Schweitz, Thin Solid Films,

vol. 292, pp. 247254, 1997.
[7] Q.-A. Huang and N. K. S. Lee, Analysis and design of polysilicon
thermal flexure actuator, J. Micromech. Microeng., vol. 9, pp. 6470,
1990.
[8] T. Scheiter et al., Sticktion-free sacrificial oxide etching in gaseous
HF, a quantitative model and its application, in Proc. Eurosensors XI,
Warsaw, Poland, Sept. 2124, 1997, pp. 13691372.
[9] W. C.-K. Tang, Comb drive for resonant sensor and actuator applications, Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. Calif., Berkeley, 1990.
[10] H. Guckel, T. Randazzo, and D. W. Burns, A simple technique for the
determination of mechanical stress in thin films with applications to silicon, J. Appl. Phys., vol. 57, 1985.
[11] W. Weibull, A statistical distribution function of wide applicability, J.
Appl. Mech., pp. 293297, 1951.
[12] P. T. Jones, G. C. Johnson, and R. T. Howe, Statistical characterization of fracture of brittle MEMS materials, Proc. SPIE, vol. 3874, pp.
2029, Sept. 1999.
[13] A. Whler, Resultate der in der Central-Werkstatt der Niederschlesisch-Mrkischen Eisenbahn zu Frankfurt a. d. O. angestellten Versuche
ber die relative Fesstigkeit von Eisen, Stahl und Kupfer, Zeitschrift
Bauwesen, vol. 16, pp. 6784, 1866.
[14] G. K. Fedder and R. T. Howe, Thermal assembly of polysilicon microstructures, in Proc. IEEE Micro Electro Mechanical Workshop, pp.
6368.
[15] L. Lin and M. Chiao, Electrothermal response of lineshape microstructures, Sens. Actuators, vol. 55, pp. 3541.
[16] S. Greek, F. Ericson, S. Johanasson, and M. Furtsch, Mechanical characterization of thick polysilicon films: Youngs modulus and fracture
strength evaluated with microstructures, J. Micromech. Microeng., vol.
9, pp. 245251, Sept. 1999.
[17] G. C. Johnson, P. T. Jones, and R. T. Howe, Materials characterization
of MEMSA comparison of uniaxial and bending tests, Proc. SPIE,
pp. 94101, Sept. 1999.
[18] T. Tsuchiya, O. Tabata, J. Sakata, and Y. Taga, Specimen size effect on
tensile strength of surface micromachined polycrystalline silicon films,
in Proc. IEEE Int. Workshop on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems,
Nagoya, Japan, Jan. 2630, 1997, pp. 529534.
[19] R. Ballarini, R. L. Mullen, H. Kahn, and A. H. Heuer, The fracture
toughness of polysilicon microdevices, in Symp. Proc. Materials
Research Soc., vol. 518, San Francisco, CA, Apr. 1516, 1998, pp.
137142.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 47, NO. 7, JULY 2000

Hergen Kapels was born in Oldenburg, Germany,

in 1970. He received the Dipl. degree in 1995 from
the University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany. Since
1995, he is working toward the Ph.D. degree at Infineon Technology, Munich, on long-term stability of
micromechanical devices. He is also engaged in the
process and device development of BiCMOS integrated micromachined sensors.

Robert Aigner received the Ph.D. degree from

Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany,
in 1996, for research on micromachined chemical
sensors.
He was a research visitor at Berkeley Sensors
and Actuators Center (BSAC) before he joined
the MEMS Research Group, Siemens Corporate
Technology, in 1997. He is now heading a group of
MEMS experts at Infineon Technologies, Munich,
with a focus on automotive sensors and MEMS for
communication technologies.

Josef Binder was born in 1949 in Munich, Germany.

He received the Dipl. degree in physics in 1975 and
the Ph.D. degree in 1978 from the Technical University of Munich. His Ph.D. research was on quantum
effects on semiconductor surfaces.
In 1979, he joined Siemens Semiconductors,
Munich, in the engineering group of semiconductor
sensors. In 1984, he joined KMK-Sensortechnik
GmbH as Head of Engineering. He moved back
to Siemens Automotive in 1988 as Head of Engineering of the automotive sensors group, and later in
Toulouse, France, he became Technical Director of the Sensor Division. Since
1992, he has been Director of the research department of IMSAS, University
of Bremen.