10 - Reliability of RF MEMS

After a brief overview of possible failure mechanisms and failure defects that can occur in radio frequency microelectromechanical systems (RF MEMS), this chapter focuses on three specific reliability issues: charging, because it remains the most important problem for capacitive RF MEMS; electrostatic discharge, because it is less known as a possible failure cause for MEMS; and package hermeticity, because this is an often underestimated problem for RF MEMS.