Makes me wonder why it is so difficult to create an airtight package for the mems device, even considering that helium is small.

Also, what happens to an iPhone if you bring it near an ultrasound source with a carefully chosen frequency?

It’s difficult with helium because the atom is so small that it can effectively penetrate the gaps in the atomic structure of almost any solid material given time. Even solid iridium can have small amounts of helium leach through.

Re ultrasonics - for some MEMS devices yes this can absolutely break things, but because the devices are so small, the resonant frequencies can often be in the hundreds of KHz or even MHz and most ultrasound transducers only produce sub 100khz frequencies

Interesting.

Since this is hacker news, I'm hoping someone could try the ultrasound part.