Explosion suppression mechanism characteristics of MEMS S&A device with in situ synthetic primer

The traditional silicon-based micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) safety and arming (S&A) device fuze cannot isolate abnormal outputs in the detonation environment, which creates hazards for personnel. To address this problem, we report the design of a MEMS S&A device with integrated silver, copper, nickel and polyimide (PI) films, which is based on the principle of a MEMS S&A device and uses copper azide as the primer. The MEMS S&A device was optimized using theoretical calculations of the explosion suppression mechanism performance in a detonation field, where the theoretical model was verified by dynamic simulation (LS-Dyna). Silicon-based MEMS processing technology was used to integrate the MEMS S&A device with energy-absorbing materials, and the device performance was compared in detonation tests. Silicon-based MEMS S&A devices with silver, copper, nickel, and PI (100-μm-thick) achieved a reliable explosion suppression mechanism capability when exposed to a detonation wave. The residual stress was measured using Raman microscopy, and the PI film exhibited the best explosion suppression mechanism performance of the four materials. A reliability test to determine the maximum explosion suppression mechanism dose for a MEMS S&A device attached to a PI film (100-μm-thick) showed that the maximum amount of primer needed for the effective explosion suppression mechanism capability on the MEMS S&A device was 0.45 mg.