Nanoscale Friction and RF MEMS

Chris Brown, NCSU Physics

Nanotribology Lab NC State

 Introduction
• Generally believed by academics, military and industry that
MEMS devices will be in forefront of next generation
technological developments.
• In particular, RF MEMS devices have the potential to enhance
many telecom and military applications due wide bandwidth
ranges and operation with lows signal loss.
• However, MEMS devices, especially those which must make
perpendicular or sliding contact are plagued by tribological
issues.
• Goal: define a set of tribological design rules limiting stiction,
friction and adhesion failures to increase low contact
resistance (< 1Ω) switch lifetime from 10-25 billion cycles to
100+ billion cycles.

Nanotribology Lab NC State

 Emerging Crisis or Already Here?
• Presently unsure if nano-scale structures can be made
mechanically and chemically resistant enough to
withstand extreme operating conditions.
• Getting devices from the laboratory to the marketplace
is far from guaranteed.
• Not enough trained professionals to deal with the
problems, now or in the future.
– Scientists and Engineers make up 5%
of the total US workforce and over
half are 40 years or older. Graduate
and undergrad student populations
continue to decrease.
– Other countries are making the
investment to catch up with the
United States.

Nanotribology Lab NC State

 Focus on Fundamentals
• Chemical and mechanical stability of moving nano-structures
underlie the field of nanotribology.
• Role of surface science and friction has received less thought
than it relative importance.
• The fundamental problems stem from a lack of work in atomic
scale tribology and surface science.
– Real contact area of RF MEMS devices tend to be on the order of 75
atoms across.
– Shearing of even a single layer of atoms can spell death for a
nanomachine.
• Eliminate fundamental problems at the laboratory phase.
Industry is too busy firefighting existing problems to conduct
the basic research needed to really answer these problems.

Nanotribology Lab NC State

 System Needs

Nanotribology Lab NC State

 Applications
Control Chip
Phase Shifter

Antenna
Micro-switch
Metallic Pad

Antenna Slat
RECAP
LCCMD - 35GHz ESA Antenna 1

Bandpass
RF Filters
Illumination
Transmitters Multi-RF
LNA
& Channel
Receivers To Receive
Beamformer
Optical or RF
Beam control
Projection System Illumination TX

Tunable Notch Filter

MEM-Tenna
2-D MEM Lens

Nanotribology Lab NC State

 Why RF MEMS?
• Large bandwidth operational range
• High linearity
• Low insertion loss
• Reduced size
• High shock resistance
• Wide temperature operational range
• Low power consumption
• Good Isolation
• Low cost
• MEMS switches pair the performance of electromechanical
switches with low cost and size of solid state switches.

Nanotribology Lab NC State

 wiSpry RF MEMS Switch

1.5mm

Lower Actuation Electrode Contact Dimple

Nanotribology Lab NC State

 MEMS Switch Summary
Low Current High Current

Good Good
Asperity Creep Lower Resistance
Better Durability Near Zero Adhesion
No Nanowire formation No Bounce

Bad Bad
Higher Resistance Poor Durability
Switch Induced Adhesion Switch Shorting by Nanowire
Switch Bouncing Welding

Our group’s MURI Grant research will be looking at this in depth to understand
switch failures in RF MEMS. It appears that reliability / durability will not be
improved by balancing the current known variables. It will require the use of
coatings and lubricants as well as non-standard environmental conditions to maintain
optimum switching conditions.

Nanotribology Lab NC State

 Opportunities for Improvement
• Exploration of nanotribological failure modes at contact
points.
– Adhesion
– Melting / Nanowire formation
– Welding
– Surface films
• Next Generation contact materials
• Failure acceleration mechanisms
250

200

150

100

50

0 50 100 150 200 250

Nanotribology Lab NC State

 Contact Resistance
Unstable
Property Au Au(95)
Resistance Ni(5)
Fc (µ N) 100 300
Resistance R (mΩ ) 15 60
FB (µ N) 0-270 0-300

Transition
Zone

Stable Contact
Resistance

Rc,min

Fc,min Force

Nanotribology Lab NC State

 Resistance Failures
• Progressively increasing resistance during cycling is the most
prevalent failure mode for MEMS switches.
– Current – decreasing current elevates resistance
– Thermochemical gradient – absorption of hydrocarbons and carbon
dioxide when exposed to air.
– Electromigration – electrons conducted through metal collide with atoms
displaced in the lattice due to higher temperatures. The scattering creates
resistivity. 2.5

– Contact area
2
• For radii smaller than the mean

Resistance (Ω)
free path, electrons are projected 1.5

ballistically through the contact

spot (Sharvin Mechanism). 1

• For radii larger than the mean 0.5

free path, resistance in

dominated by diffuse scattering. 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Log10 Cumulative Cycles

Nanotribology Lab NC State

 Previous Work

• Limited work has been done on failure

mechanisms and switch durability.
• Lack of correlation between test environments
and data
• Time to failure measurements have limited
meaning if not correlated to operating
conditions.

Nanotribology Lab NC State

 Current Work
• Vacuum
– May help eliminate formation of oxide layers on gold surfaces.
– Working to understand problems with actuation at low pressure. Die are
designed for dampening due to air in normal atmosphere. Q values in vacuum
increase ten fold.
• Cryogenic
– Initial tests show the die can survive 77Kelvin. Next step is to go down to
3Kelvin and cycle switches.
– Lower temps will lessen softening / melting effects. This will in turn diminish
adhesion problems by maintaining surface roughness.

( 2
L Tθ − To
2
) =
U2
4

Nanotribology Lab NC State

 Current Work

• Variable Atmospheres
– Operation of switches in inert gasses such as dry nitrogen and argon at normal
atmospheric pressures may overcome operational issues in the vacuum
environment while stopping oxide formation.
• Problem: working devices.
• Future work: accelerated test methods.

Nanotribology Lab NC State

 Goals
• Gain understanding of failure statistics under at range of
operating parameters in various environmental
conditions.
• Identify the physical phenomena associated with failures.
• Develop accelerated lifecycle testing methods to
statistically determine the most detrimental failure modes
and test new materials.
• Apply knowledge to a range of MEMS devices to ensure
findings are not device specific.
• Use this knowledge to build a set of tribological design
rules that will control frictional problems to a degree
where micromachines and switches will be an
economically viable option for general application.

Nanotribology Lab NC State