Examination of Bulge Test for Determining Residual Stress, Young’s Modulus, and Poisson’s Ratio of 3C-SiC Thin Films
Publication: Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 16, Issue 2
Abstract
Despite great advancements in thin-film growth and deposition techniques, determination of the residual stress and Young’s modulus for thin films has continued to be a challenge. The bulge test is a potentially powerful tool for characterizing these mechanical properties but is underutilized because of its sensitivity to experimental error. The bulge test is highly sensitive to sample and test preparation, accuracy of the deflection measurement, accuracy in the measurement of film dimensions, and selection of the correct equation to be used for extraction of the Young’s modulus and residual stress. In this study, effort has been made to consolidate the findings from various reports in the literature, and a thorough error analysis has been conducted. A discussion on the experimental technique used to extract Poisson’s ratio from the bulge test is also presented. Finally, the technique is used to determine the residual stress and Young’s modulus of 3C-SiC thin films grown on silicon.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Allen, M. G., Mehregany, M., Howe, R. T., and Sentuia, S. D.(1987). “Microfabricated structures for the in situ measurement of residual stress, Young’s modulus, and ultimate strain of thin films.” Appl. Phys. Lett., 51, 241–243.
Beams, J. W. (1959). “Mechanical properties of thin films of gold and silver.” Structure and properties of thin films, Wiley, New York, 183–192.
Berg, J. von, Reichert, W., Obermeier, E., Wagner, C., Krotz, Diamler G., and Niemann, E. (1996). “Dependence of the elastic properties of thin β-SiC films on their crystallinity and the deposition conditions.” Transactions of the 3rd Int. HiTEC, Alburquerque, N.M., 51–57.
Breton, F. A., and Knauss, W. G.(1997). “Error limitations in the determination of mechanical properties of thin films.” J. Reinf. Plast. Compos., 16(1), 17–32.
Cardinale, G. F., and Tustison, R. W.(1992). “Fracture strength and biaxial modulus measurement of plasma silicon nitride films.” Thin Solid Films, 207, 126–130.
Chandra, Kavita (1997). Characterization of residual stress and elastic modulus of silicon carbide films grown on silicon by APCVD, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, 1–125.
Jayaraman, S., Edwards, R. L., and Hemker, K. J.(1999). “Relating mechanical testing and microstructural features of polysilicon thin films.” J. Mater. Res. Soc.,14(3), 688–697.
Karimi, A., Shojaei, O. R., Kruml, T., and Martin, J. L. (1997). “Characterization of TiN thin films using the bulge test and the nanoindentation technique.” Thin Solid Films, 308–309, 334–339.
Maier-Schneider, D., Koprululu, A., Mallhausen Holm, S., and Obermeier, E.(1996). “Elastic properties and microstructure of LPCVD polysilicon films.” J. Micromech. Microeng., 6, 436–446.
Maier-Schneider, D., Maibach, J., and Obermeier, E.(1995). “A new analytical solution for the load-deflection of square membranes.” J. Microelectromech. Syst., 4(4), 238–241.
Mehregany, M., Tong, L., Matus, L. G., and Larkin, D. J.(1997). “Internal stress and elastic modulus measurements on micromachined 3C-SiC thin films.” IEEE Trans. Electron Devices, 44(1), 74–79.
Mitchell, Jay (2000). “Characterization of the mechanical properties of cubic single crystal silicon carbide deposited onto silicon.” Masters thesis, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, 1–127.
Morse, K., Weihs, T. P., Hamza, A. V., Balooch, M., Jaing, Z., and Bogy, D. B.(1997). “Nanomechanical properties of SiC films grown from precursors using atomic force microscopy.” J. Tribology-Trans. ASME,119(1), 26–30.
Pan, J. Y., Lin, P., Maseeh, F., and Senturia, S. D. (1990). “Verification of FEM analysis of load-deflection methods for measuring mechanical property of thin films.” Technical Digest, IEEE Solid-State Sensor and Actuator Workshop, Hilton Head, S.C., 191+, 70–73.
Small, M. K., and Nix, W. D.(1992). “Analysis of the accuracy of the bulge test in determining the mechanical properties of thin films.” J. Mater. Res., 7(6), 1553–63.
Stewart, R. A., Kim, J., Kim, E. S., White, R. M., and Muller, R. S.(1991). “Young’s modulus and residual stress of LPCVD silicon-rich silicon nitride determined from membrane deflection.” Sens. Mater., 2(5), 285–298.
Tabata, O., Kawahata, K., Sugiyama, S., and Igarishi, I.(1989). “Mechanical property measurements of thin films using load-deflection of composite rectangular membranes.” Sens. Actuators, 20(1–2), 135–141.
Timoshenko, S. P. (1959). Theory of plates and shells, McGraw-Hill, New York.
Tong, L., Mehregany, M., and Matus, L. G.(1992). “Mechanical properties of 3C silicon carbide.” Appl. Phys. Lett., 60(24), 2992–2994.
Tsakalakos, T.(1981). “The bulge test: A comparison of theory and experiment for isotropic and anisotropic films.” Thin Solid Films, 75, 293–305.
Vinci, R. P., and Vlassak, J. J.(1996). “Mechanical behavior of thin Films.” Annu. Rev. Mater. Sci., 26, 431–462.
Vlassak, J. J. (1994). “New experimental techniques and analysis methods for the study of the mechanical properties of materials in small volumes.” PhD dissertation, Stanford University.
Vlassak, J. J., and Nix, W. D.(1992). “A new bulge test technique for the determination of Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio of thin films.” J. Mater. Res. Soc.,7(12), 3242–3249.
Ye, X. Y., Zhang, J. H., Zhou, Z. Y., and Yang, Y. (1996). “Measurement of the Young’s modulus and residual stress of micro membranes.” Proc., 7th Int. Symposium on Micro Machine Human Science, New York, 125–129.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Aerospace Engineering
Volume 16 • Issue 2 • April 2003
Pages: 46 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 27, 2002
Accepted: Nov 27, 2002
Published online: Mar 14, 2003
Published in print: Apr 2003
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.