High-cycle fatigue damage evaluation for micro-nanoscale single crystal silicon under bending and tensile stressing

This paper proposes a new high-cycle fatigue parameter for correlating fatigue lives of micro/nanoscale single crystal silicon (SCS) structures under bending and tensile stressing. The authors have reported the bending fatigue lives of nanoscale fixed-fixed SCS beams at MEMS 2003, and discussed the effects of specimen size, temperature and frequency on the fatigue lives. This research carried out fatigue tests of micro/nanoscale SCS structures under bending/tensile stressing for revealing the influence of deformation mode on SCS fatigue lives. Consequently, we enabled to propose an effective fatigue damage parameter for predicting fatigue lives of SCS structures ranging from micro-to nanoscale, regardless of deformation mode and specimen size. The fatigue damage parameter can be used for design of MEMS components subjected to fluctuating stressing.