Nancy:

Some papers in this area are:
Chan et al., "Characterization of contact electromechanics...", JMEMS 8,
2, 6/99
Goldsmith et al., "Lifetime characterization of capacitive..." IEEE
MTT-S Digest, 01
Reid, "Simulation and measurement of dielectric charging...", Proc. Mod.
& Sim. of
  Microsystems, San Juan, 4/02
Reid & Webster, "Measurements of charging...", Electronics Letters, 38,
24, 11/02

And you probably know there is some material in Gabriel Rebeiz's book, I
think in
chapter 7.
There must be some more papers on this subject, I hope someone else adds
to this
list.

Tom Korsmeyer

Jia, Nancy wrote:

>To those who have expertise in charge trapping, charge injection,
>leakage current, and other electrical failure modes of MEMS devices, I
>have the following questions for you.  This is for a high field and high
>frequency application.
>
>1.   If I use high quality dielectrics, such as thermal oxide on top of
>the fixed conductor, can I use an unipolar signal to drive the membrane
>pull-in without causing charge trapping/charge injection problem?
>
>2.   With a high-quality thermal oxide layer on the fixed conductor, can
>I eliminate charge build up by using a bipolar signal?
>
>3.   With a LPCVD nitride layer on the fixed conductor, can I eliminate
>charge build up by using a bipolar signal?
>
>4.   Is there any good paper in the area?  Who is the world expert in
>electrostatic mems device?