Reliability study on thin film capped monolithic CMOS-MEMS resonator with standard plastic packaging

A detailed reliability study on monolithic CMOS-MEMS resonator devices with zero level packaging (ZLP) is reported in this paper. Whilst many methods have been reported to co-integrate MEMS with CMOS circuits in the same die, very few have addressed the challenge to bring the device to the next packaging level and no research shows the impact of critical reliability tests into the MEMS resonator performance. The unique ZLP process allows the standard plastic molding methods for the packaging of the electrostatic CMOS-MEMS resonators. This paper presents the electrical results on plastic packaged MEMS resonators with CMOS amplifiers after performing some of the most extreme reliability tests employed in the semiconductor IC certification.