ACCELERATED LIFE TESTING FOR MICRO-MACHINED CHEMICAL SENSORS

Reliability & quality assurance are a major concern in the semiconduct or industry. However, when developing a new mass-production technology , like micro-machined silicon-based devices, these aspects became part icularly critical. Indeed, silicon-based thin-film tin-dioxide gas-sen sor reliability has not been deeply studied; most of the completed stu dies address thick-film devices made on alumina substrates [1 - 3]. Ne w test- methods & equipment must be engineered to meet the ever-increa sing expectations of the marketplace. This paper justifies the need fo r new accelerated tests for chemical sensors. A new method which allow s 'stressing the entire device structure' has been implemented. Test r esults obtained using this new approach allow us to evaluate the senso r reliability in the range of the requirements of applications using g as sensors.