Reliability of materials in MEMS : residual stress and adhesion in a micro power generation system.
- Washington State University, Pullman, WA
The reliability of thin film systems is important to the continued development of microelectronic and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS). The reliability of these systems is often tied to the ability of the films to remain adhered to its substrate. By measuring the amount of energy to separate the film from the substrate, researchers can predicts film lifetimes. Recent work has resulted in several different testing techniques to measure this energy including spontaneous buckling, indentation induced delamination and four point bending. This report focuses on developing quantifiable adhesion measurements for multiple thin film systems used in MEMS and other thin film systems of interest to Sandia programs. First, methods of accurately assessing interfacial toughness using stressed overlayer methods are demonstrated using both the W/Si and Au/Si systems. For systems where fracture only occurs along the interface, such as Au/Si, the calculated fracture energies between different tests are identical if the energy put into the system is kept near the needed strain energy to cause delamination. When the energy in the system is greater than needed to cause delamination, calculated adhesion energies can increase by a factor of three due to plastic deformation. Dependence of calculated adhesion energies on applied energy in the system was also shown when comparisons of four point bending and stressed overlayer test methods were completed on Pt/Si systems. The fracture energies of Pt/Ti/SiO{sub 2} were studied using four-point bending and compressive overlayers. Varying the thickness of the Ti film from 2 to 17 nm in a Pt/Ti/SiO{sub 2} system, both test methods showed an increase of adhesion energy until the nominal Ti thickness was 12nm. Then the adhesion energy began to decrease. While the trends in toughness are similar, the magnitude of the toughness values measured between the test methods is not the same, demonstrating the difficulty in extracting mode I toughness as mixed mode loading approaches mode II conditions.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Albuquerque, NM, and Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000
- OSTI ID:
- 920451
- Report Number(s):
- SAND2007-6070; TRN: US200818%%607
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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