Reliability issues of COTS MEMS for aerospace applications

During the last decade, research and development of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) has shown a significant promise for a variety of commercial applications including automobile and medical purposes. For example, accelerometers are widely used for air bag in automobile and pressure sensors for various industrial applications. Same of the MEMS devices have potential to become the commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components. While high reliability applications including aerospace require much more sophisticated technology development, they would achieve significant cost savings if they could utilize COTS components in their systems. This paper reviews the current status of MEMS packaging technology from COTS to specific application provides lessons learned, and finally, identifies a need for a systematic approach for this purpose.