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Monotonic and fatigue testing of freestanding submicron thin beams application for MEMS

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Abstract

A freestanding submicron thin film specimen is designed and fabricated here to carry out a series of monotonic and fatigue testing. This freestanding beam was loaded by performing monotonic loading/unloading or closed-loop load controlled tension–tension fatigue experiments on it. Loading was applied using a piezoelectric actuator with 0.1 μm resolution connected to the test specimen. Loads were measured by connected a capacitor load cell with a resolution of less than 0.1 mN. The modulus, yield stress and maximum stress of tested submicron thin films at room temperature were found from monotonic loading/unloading tests. The results of 300 nm copper thin films fatigue experiments demonstrated a trend of decreasing cycles to failure with increasing loading amplitude and increasing mean stress.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by Taiwan National Science Council; grant number NSC94-2218-E-005-019 and also supported in part by the Ministry of Education, Taiwan under the ATU plan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Precision Engineering, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, 402, Taiwan

    Ming-Tzer Lin, Chi-Jia Tong & Kai-Shiang Shiu

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  1. Ming-Tzer Lin
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  2. Chi-Jia Tong
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  3. Kai-Shiang Shiu
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Correspondence to Ming-Tzer Lin.

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Lin, MT., Tong, CJ. & Shiu, KS. Monotonic and fatigue testing of freestanding submicron thin beams application for MEMS. Microsyst Technol 14, 1041–1048 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-007-0463-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-007-0463-5

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