A Self-repairable MEMS Comb Accelerometer

The final publication is available at www.springerlink.comIn this paper, a built-in self-repair technique for the MEMS comb accelerometer device is proposed. The main device of the comb accelerometer consists of n identical modules, and m modules are introduced as the redundancy. If any of the working module in the main device is found faulty during a built-in self-test (BIST), the control circuit will replace it with a good redundant module. In this way, the faulty device can be self-repaired through redundancy. The implementation of dualmode BIST on the BISR module is discussed. The sensitivity loss due to device modularization can be well compensated by different design alternatives. The yield model for MEMS redundancy repair is developed. The simulation results show that the BISR (built-in self-repair) design leads to effective yield increase compared to non-BISR design, especially for a moderate non-BISR yield. The yield as well as the reliability of the accelerometer can be improved due to the redundancy repair.http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F1-4020-5261-8_1