MEMS testing has always been challenging. Now, with many emerging and new types of materials, device testing and characterization is becoming even more important. However, even at the R&D level, most MEMS testing techniques still only rely on electrical, rather than mechanical, measurements. We recently spoke with Dr. Felix Beyeler, the founder and CEO of FemtoTools, about his company and the developing field of MEMS mechanical testing. In this detailed interview, Felix provides his insights on the latest mechanical testing techniques, emerging applications, and his perspective on the MEMS R&D tool market.
MEMS Journal: When was your company founded? What are the company's origins? Where did the technology come from?
Felix Beyeler: We founded the company in 2007 as a spin-off from ETH Zurich in Switzerland. Before then, my co-founder Simon Muntwyler and I worked on MEMS based micromechanical testing instruments during our PhD studies. After publishing our work in scientific journals, we have been contacted by many international research groups that wanted to use our technology for their research. We founded FemtoTools as a reaction to this strong interest by the research community. Since the company founding, we are further developing the technology.
MEMS Journal: In terms of your customer base right now, what percentage is from academia and what percentage is from industry?
Felix Beyeler: Our main focus is on providing research instruments. Therefore, about 70% of our customers are from academic research laboratories. The other 30% are industrial customers working in R&D or quality control.
MEMS Journal: What is your company's main focus?
Felix Beyeler: There is a growing demand for mechanical testing equipment and quality control at the microscale and nanoscale. Our focus is to provide highly accurate and flexible scientific instruments for testing the mechanics at the microscale. Our MEMS based technology platform enables applications that cannot be addressed using other conventional technologies. Right now, our typical applications fields include MEMS, nanomaterials, and biomaterials testing. Our instruments help our customers to make their research more efficient which ultimately reduces the R&D time and costs, and leads to faster and higher quality publications.
MEMS Journal: Why is there this growing demand for mechanical testing equipment now? What’s driving it?
Felix Beyeler: Traditionally, most MEMS have been fabricated using silicon as a base material. Currently, a large number of researchers are studying other materials such as ceramics and polymers with a great variety of material characteristics. Additionally, new “smart” nanomaterials are opening up new applications fields. However, the physical properties of these materials are not well understood at this size scale yet.
MEMS Journal: Why is mechanical testing of MEMS important?
Felix Beyeler: By definition, MEMS include both electrical and mechanical components, which means that testing of MEMS devices must involve the evaluation of both electrical and mechanical characteristics, as well as the combination of both. However, many research groups only perform electrical tests, since they are lacking suitable instruments for quantitative mechanical tests. This is something that we are changing with our tools and technology.
MEMS Journal: What are your plans for 2015? What are the major milestones on the agenda?
Felix Beyeler: There is an ongoing trend towards miniaturization. Therefore, we will launch a new testing system that can be used inside a scanning electron microscope (SEM). This enables an extremely accurate sensor-to-sample alignment and the real-time observation of the sample under test using the SEM’s imaging capabilities.
MEMS Journal: Why did you specifically pick this system to be used inside the SEM?
Felix Beyeler: Performing in-situ nanomechanical testing was a repeatedly requested by our current customers. The reason is that the world’s leading universities are focusing on ever smaller MEMS and NEMS components. We believe that our SEM testing system will have a large impact in terms of new scientific results that will be achieved by our customers and also for us commercially.
MEMS Journal: What are some of the other interesting products that you plan to launch in the near future?
Felix Beyeler: We are working on the initial version of two-axis sensing heads which are designed for the simultaneous in-plane and out-of-plane mechanical testing of MEMS. These new type of sensing heads will be fully compatible with our current MEMS testing instruments. Besides multi-axis MEMS testing, new testing modes such as friction force testing, scratch testing, or shear testing will be enabled.
MEMS Journal: Who are your main competitors?
Felix Beyeler: Luckily, there is little competition in our market. Atomic force microscopes (AFM) and nanoindenters are very well established products. However, these products have been optimized for imaging and indentation experiments. For applications such as the quantitative electro-mechanical testing of MEMS, our technology is much more suitable.
MEMS Journal: Lack of strong competition may actually be a bad sign. For example, the market could be too small or the profit margins may be unattractive. Are you concerned about either of these? Why or why not?
Felix Beyeler: No, we are not concerned about this at all. The size of the research market, as well as the market for quality control instruments, is usually underestimated even by experts in the field. The challenge is that these markets are highly fragmented both geographically and thematically because engineers and researchers want to constantly invent something new. We are dealing with this challenge by providing versatile instruments that can easily be adapted to a wide range of different applications.
MEMS Journal: What are the main things that make FemtoTools unique? In other words, what can FemtoTools do that others cannot?
Felix Beyeler: There are several aspects that make our technology unique. First is the high flexibility of our products that can be reconfigured for almost any micromechanical testing task in the nanonewton to millinewton range. This includes vertical testing, horizontal testing, the selection of different sensing ranges, imaging the sample under test at different viewing angles, and many other techniques. Another unique feature is the direct, probe-based electrical and mechanical testing of MEMS devices to characterize structures directly on the wafer. The third, and probably the most important unique, feature is the individual calibration of our microforce sensing probes for true quantitative measurements at the micro and nanoscale. We are collaborating with the Federal Institute of Metrology (METAS) for the International System of Units (SI) traceable calibration and the lowest possible measurement uncertainty.
MEMS Journal: What are the top three MEMS experiments that people are running with you equipment?
Felix Beyeler: The first is the vertical and horizontal stiffness testing of elastic MEMS elements such as springs and membranes. The second is testing the deflection range and the actuation force generated by MEMS actuators. The third is the process control to mechanically detect release, etch depth, under/over etch, and stiction during MEMS manufacturing.
MEMS Journal: What are the top three MEMS experiments that people want to run on your equipment, but are not possible with your instruments?
Felix Beyeler: The first is performing cyclic mechanical testing in the MHz and GHz range. Unfortunately, probe based testing systems are not capable of this. The second is to perform multi-axis force measurements on MEMS sensors and actuators without having to change the orientation of the sensing head. This is something we are currently working on. We will present a great solution for this within the next few months. The third is to provide systems for high-throughput systems for high volume MEMS production. Even though we are constantly increasing the level of automation, our focus is on providing research instrumentation. Measurement time and ease-of-use are very important. However, we are currently not focusing on high-throughput systems.
MEMS Journal: From which geographic regions are you current seeing the most orders and demand?
Felix Beyeler: Mainly for historical reasons we have our largest customer base in Europe, but North America and Asia are catching up fast.
MEMS Journal: Which industry events did you personally attend in the past year? Which one was your favorite and why?
Felix Beyeler: Since we are a provider of instruments for the research market, our most important events are scientific conferences such as the IEEE MEMS and Transducers events. There, we can meet with researchers and engineers that are developing the next generation of MEMS technologies which is very exciting. The MRS fall meeting is an awesome event to meet with people from the material science community.
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This article is a part of MEMS Journal's ongoing market research project in the area of MEMS testing and reliability. If you would like to receive our comprehensive market research report on this topic, please contact Dr. Mike Pinelis at mike@memsjournal.com for more information about rates and report contents.
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